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UNITED STATES OF" AMERICA. 



A CATECHISM OF THE CON- 
STITUTION OF THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA 



WITH SKETCHES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND RATIFYING 

CONVENTIONS; AND VALUABLE PERSONAL, HISTORICAL, 

POLITICAL AND LEGAL INFORMATION, CRITICISM 

AND INTERPRETATION 



ADAPTED TO STUDENTS AND STATESMEN 



/ 



JOHN W. OVERALL 

JOURNALIST 



^ 



NEW YORK 
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 

243 West 126TH Street 
1896 




^.^ J \ \ 



l^^c^t 



Copyright, 1892, by John W. Overall 
\_Al/ rights reserved'\ 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Aster Place, New York 



TO MY BROTHER 

GIBSON Y. OVERALL 

OF ALABAMA 

EMINENT AT THE BAR 

AND DEVOTED TO THE PRINCIPLES 

OF THE CONSTITUTION 

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

BY THE AUTHOR 



PRELIMINARY. 

PERIL OR SAFETY — WHICH SHALL IT BE? 

Napoleon the Third proclaimed, "The Empire 
is Peace/' The empire was war until it went 
down in the red sunset of Sedan. 

Melville W. Fuller, on the eve of his nomination 
to the Chief-Justiceship of the United States, 
said, in his eulogy on Stephen A. Douglas: '' The 
Republic is Opportunity." He ought to have 
said that this extended confederation of States 
was meant to be Opportunity. 

In the convention which framed the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, Charles Pinckney de- 
clared, "In the United States there is but one 
order/' Is that true to-day ? Is there not the 
growing aristocracy of wealth ? 

In the same convention Alexander Hamilton 
declared that, " As long as office is open to all 
men and no constitutional rank is established, it 
is true republicanism.'' Is that true to-day ? Is 
genius or moral merit or political knowledge 
rewarded by even so slight a thing as acknowl- 
edgment ? Is it not a crime to be poor, however 
gifted? James Madison in the *' Federalist " wrote : 



2 PRELIMINARY. 

*' Who are to be the objects of the popular choice ? 
Every citizen whose merits may recommend him 
to the esteem and confidence of his country. No 
qualification of wealth or civil profession is per- 
mitted to fetter the judgment or disappoint the 
inclination of the people/' Is that true to-day ? 
Are not nominations bought before election in the 
name of assessment ? 

Are the questions of Thomas Jefferson now 
asked of an aspirant to public office : '' Is he hon- 
est ? Is he capable ? Is he faithful to the Con- 
stitution ? '' The only question asked as to a 
presidential candidate, or an aspirant to such can- 
didacy, is this one: '* Is he available?** Or, in 
case of an applicant for appointment : ^^ What is 
his influence in his city or county or State ? ** Is 
suffrage not a farce played by demagogues? Are 
not ignorant voters the puppets of opulent or 
crafty and ambitious office-seekers? Does not 
wealth often dominate the Senate of the United 
States, and intrepid mediocrity dominate often the 
House of Representatives? Do not Presidents 
bid for second terms and manipulate so-called 
** national conventions '* ? 

Is not worse than Walpolean corruption winked 
at in high places everywhere ? Is not the success 
of party everything, the State a second consider- 
ation? Is not monopoly supreme in many of the 



PRELIMINARY. ' 3 

States of the Union ? Is the whole country not 
changing from an exotical human inundation and 
a growing tendency to European centralism ? 

Instead of the splendid axiom of a late writer : 
'' Worms to the dust ; eagles to the empyrean/* 
is not the opposite too true : Worms to the front ; 
vultures to the empyrean? In the gradual focal- 
ization of power in Washington, and consequent 
disregard of the limitations of the Constitution 
and the reserved rights of the several States, is 
not the spectre of the Man on Horseback dis- 
cerned in the twilight of distance? Is not his 
coming ultimately certain, unless there shall be 
social and political reform? In the insweeping, 
unrestricted tide of foreign immigrants of mon- 
archical habits of thought, diverse tongues, differ- 
ing religions, and unassimilating tendencies, is 
there not anarchic danger? Is there not an igno- 
rant use of the ballot by a growing African-Amer- 
ican population, and a terrible prospective racial 
collision which must end in the extinction of one 
race or the other, or the ruin of both the white 
and the black races by hybridization ? Is not the. 
Republic Peril ? 

WHAT IS THE ROAD TO SAFETY? 

The author has endeavored to reblaze the road 
to safety in the pages which follow. Our fathers 



4 PRELIMINARY, 

studied the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and the letter and spirit of the Consti- 
tution of the United States. In the rush of com- 
merce and trade, the selfish desire for plutocratic 
millions, and the mad struggle for political power 
and plunder, good government is neglected, and 
the great charters of freedom relegated to the 
dust of the libraries. We must become students 
and patriots again, or the historian will chronicle 
the greatest suicide of the centuries — the destruc- 
tion of the last republic that promised to federate 
the world. 

Authors and statesmen who understand the 
genius and practical workings of our institutions 
should make haste to correct a growing fallacy 
which has for its nourishment political ignorance. 
The fallacy is that the United States have out- 
grown the Constitution, which needs important 
revision. 

Although more than a century has elapsed 
since its ratification by the States, the people 
have not grown up to the principles of the Con- 
stitution. The minority have governed, and still 
govern. This is chiefly due to the tremendous 
influx of new peoples who are in everything 
diverse. They need education in the great school 
of our fathers, who were students of the histories 
of all of the republics and nations of the earth. 



A CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITU- 
TION OF THE UNITED STATES 
OF AMERICA. 

What is the baptismal name of our States-Union ? 
The United States of America. 

Whence came the Union and the name ? 

From the temporary confederation of the Colo- 
nies for self-defence within the British empire. 
The United Colonies led to an independent Union 
which was thereafter known as the United States 
of America. 

The Colonial War was commenced, and prose- 
cuted a year with the hope of '' redressing griev- 
ances.'' George Washington was commissioned 
commander-in-chief in the name of all the Colo- 
nies severally recited. When Congress had issued 
to the world the Declaration of Independence, the 
Colonies rose to the dignity of sovereign States. 
** We, therefore, the representatives of the United 



O CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

States of America in General Congress assembled," 
are the concluding words of that creative instru- 
ment. The official oath was : '^ I acknowledge the 
thirteen United States, namely, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence 
Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary land, Virginia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free, 
sovereign and independent States/' 

Did a compact follow the Declaration ? 

The Articles of Confederation succeeded. They 
bore the caption of ^^ Articles of Confederation 
and Perpetual Union between the States of New 
Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary- 
land, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
and Georgia.*' Article I. declares : '' The style of 
this Confederacy shall be the United States of 
America.'* Article II.: ^' Each State retains its 
sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every 
power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this 
confederation expressly delegated to the United 
States in Congress assembled." Article III. pro- 
vides that, ** The said States hereby severally 
enter into a firm league of friendship with each 
other, for their common defence, the security of 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 7 

their liberties, and their mutual and general wel- 
fare/' etc. 

Was this the genesis of a constitutional Union of 
the States ? 

It was. The Articles of Confederation were 
formulated by Congress, July 9, 1778, and ratified 
between the thirteen States, March i, 1781, and 
the War of the Revolution was fought to the 
finish under them. The treaty of peace with 
Great Britain, as well as the treaty with France, 
our ally, was made with the United States as 
separate republics. Each State was nam.ed. 

The treaty of peace with Great Britain recited 
that, '^ His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the 
said United States, namely, New Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary- 
land, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, 
and Georgia, to be free, independent, and sovereign 
States.'* John Jay drew the treaty. 

What was the policy of Congress before and after 
confederation ? 

Congress having been the United Colonies, and 
afterward the thirteen United States in council, 
urged the ratification of the Articles. Before 
they were ratified Congress resolved, but never 



8 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

legislated. Under them Congress enacted, not re- 
solved. Each State had one vote, cast by dele- 
gates annually chosen by the several legislatures. 
Societies of men constituting a body politic voted, 
not men. 

The word ** Congress '' was first suggested by 
Great Britain, 1695. It was proposed to unite 
the Colonies for general defence with a general 
Congress. The Colonies declined. 

What is to be understood by the foregoing ? 

The Colonists and the people of the thirteen 
States were in favor of a distribution, not a con- 
centration, of power. New Hampshire, on the 
15th of June, 1776, voted that the thirteen United 
Colonies ought to be declared ^^ a free and inde- 
pendent State.'' This consolidation movement 
was repudiated by the Congress on the Fourth of 
July following. The Declaration of Indepen- 
dence did not say that these Colonies are and of 
right ought to be a free and independent State, 
but ^* free and independent States.'' 

Prior to that great State paper being signed, 
several States had withdrawn from Great Britain 
and become separate republics. The Colonists 
were, from the historic era of settlement, decen- 
tralists in opinion and in act. Such are the facts 
of history. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 9 

What was the next move to help along constitu- 
tional government^ in 1786? 

Five States met in convention at Annapolis, 
Md.; namely, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylva- 
nia, Delaware, and Maryland. An address written 
by Alexander Hamilton of New York was issued 
that " a convention of all the States should meet 
at Philadelphia, the second Monday of May, 1787, 
to consider measures to render the Constitution 
of the Federal government adequate to the 
exigencies of the Union/' Virginia, on motion 
of James Madison, agreed to send delegates, 
but with the understanding that the proposed 
measures should be confirmed by the several 
States. 

Congress, in accord with Virginia and other 
States, declared that a convention should be held 
at Philadelphia, '' for the sole and express pur- 
pose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and 
report to that body and to the State legislatures 
such alterations and provisions as will make the 
Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies 
of the Union." 

Such report was to be agreed to by Congress, 
and confirmed by the States. 

What is a Federal Constitution ? 

A compact between the States. The last in- 



10 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

strument framed was not called a Federal Consti- 
tution, but the Constitution of the United States 
of America. 

Revision, or creation, or selection ? 

In the summer of 1782, Alexander Hamilton, 
through Gen. Philip Schuyler, whose daughter he 
had married, proposed to the legislature of New 
York that each State should proceed '' to adopt 
the measure of assembling a general convention 
of the States, specially authorized to revise and 
amend the Articles of Confederation." Deputies 
from every State, except Rhode Island, appointed 
by the legislatures, began work at Philadelphia, 
May 25, 1787, and finished their labors on the 17th 
of September following. The body was called in 
the '^Journal '' in which the proceedings were re- 
corded : '' The Federal convention.*' 

There is a significant first entry, viz.: *' In virtue 
of their appointments from their respective States 
sundry deputies to the Federal convention ap- 
peared, but a majority of States not being repre- 
sented,'' an adjournment took place. Hereafter 
special mention is made of the personality of the 
States in the concluding words of the new Consti- 
tution. 

The members of the convention sat with closed 
doors, and with agreed secrecy, against which the 



OF THE UNITED STATES. II 

people demurred, and much bitter feeling followed, 
as it was said they were framing the constitution 
of a strong or centralized government. Two 
deputies from New York, Yates and Lansing, 
went home, because they agreed that the conven- 
tion were not revising the Articles of Confedera- 
tion, but creating a new organic law. Hamilton 
remained. The convention did not so much re- 
vise as select and create. /They acted generally 
on the advice of George Reed of Delaware, who 
said : *^The confederation was founded on tempo- 
rary principles ; to patch it up, would be like put- 
ting new cloth on an old garment.*' 

The deputies disregarded the resolution of the 
Annapolis convention and the act of Congress, 
and commenced de novo. 

Can you give examples of selection ? 

Yes. A perusal of the Articles of Confederation 
shows that the convention made liberal use of their 
sections. The ** Senate " is not a creation, save as 
to the compromise between the large and small 
States. The name had been used in New Hamp- 
shire, Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. New 
Hampshire, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Penn- 
sylvania, and Vermont called the popular branch 
of their legislatures the '' House of Representa- 



12 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

tives/' Senatorial rotation was taken from New- 
York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. To 
New Hampshire and Massachusetts is due the pro- 
vision that all bills for appropriations of money 
shall originate in the House. The President's 
message is derived from New York, his oath from 
Pennsylvania. The method of impeachment came 
from New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, 
New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, and 
South Carolina. The veto of the President is to 
be credited to the Massachusetts Constitution of 
1780. The filling of vacancies by the President 
in the recess of Congress was furnished by North 
Carolina. The names "' president " and ^* vice- 
president " came from '^governor '' and '' lieutenant- 
governor '' of the several Colonies. In fact, New 
Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and South 
Carolina had used the name '' president,'* prefer- 
ring it to ^* governor." Inter-State citizenship was 
derived from the New England confederation of 
1643. So, several other provisions of the Consti- 
tution of 1787 might be cited as being derived 
from the organic laws of the Colonies. But the 
foregoing are enough to show that the convention 
dealt largely in selection from the wisdom of the 
Colonies and the emancipated States. Even the 
Bill of Rights was substantially taken from State 
constitutions. 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 1 3 

What was the first zvork of the convention ? 

Pennsylvania proposed George Washington 
should be President ; Dr. Franklin was to have 
made the motion, but a storm of rain prevented 
him. Robert Morris was selected to act in his 
place; and John Rutledge, on behalf of South 
Carolina, seconded the motion of Pennsylvania, 

Give the best description of the President. 

General Washington is described by one of his 
biographers, Aaron Bancroft, who modelled his 
work after Marshall's ^' Life," "' as exactly six feet 
in height ; he appeared taller, as his shoulders 
rose a little higher than the true proportions. 
His eyes were of a gray, and his hair of a dark 
brown color. His complexion was light, and his 
countenance serene and thoughtful. His limbs 
were well formed, and indicated strength." He 
had long and muscular arms, and General Lafayette 
said his hands were the largest he had ever seen 
on a human being. Washington was fifty-five at 
this time. 

Who was the youngest, and who the oldest, deputy 
in the convention ? 

Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire was the 
youngest, being twenty-five ; and Dr. Franklin of 
Pennsylvania was the oldest, being eighty-one. 



14 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

One-third of the number were under forty years, 
and but seven of the fifty-five deputies exceeded 
sixty years. 

Name the plans of government submitted to the 
convention. 

Edmund Randolph, deputy from Virginia, of- 
fered a series of fifteen resolutions on the 29th 
of May, 1787, which looked to a '* national'* sys- 
tem of government, executive, legislative, and ju- 
diciary. Charles Pinckney, deputy from South 
Carolina, submitted a mixed plan, as it has been 
called. Both plans were referred to the Commit- 
tee of the Whole on the same day. On the 15th of 
June, 1787, William Patterson, deputy from New 
Jersey, offered a plan to amend, in some particu- 
lars, the Articles of Confederation, but preserving 
the Federal features of the system. This, also, 
was referred to the Committee of the Whole. 

Judge Joseph R. Flanders of New York, in ^^ A 
Sketch of Political Parties and their Principles," 
thus summarizes the Hamiltonian plan : '' On the 
i8th of June, 1787, Alexander Hamilton of New 
York made a speech in the convention, in which 
he read a paper expressing his ideas of a suitable 
plan of government, the prominent features of 
which were : A President for life ; a Senate for 
life; a lower House elected for three years; the 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 1 5 

legislative branch to be called the legislature of 
the United States, Vv^ith power to pass all laws 
whatsoever, subject to the negative of the life 
executive, whose veto was to be absolute ; and 
the governor of each State to be appointed by 
the general government, and to have the absolute 
power of vetoing all laws passed by the State 
legislature. 

''In his speech he said: 'We must establish a 
general and national government completely sov- 
ereign, and annihilate all State distinctions and 
operations. ... I believe the British gov- 
ernment forms the best model the world ever 
produced. . . . All communities divide them- 
selves into the few and the many. The first are 
the rich and well born, the other the mass of the 
people. Give, therefore, to the first class a dis- 
tinct, permanent share in the government. . . . 
See the excellence of the British executive. 
. . . Nothing short of such an executive can 
be eflficient. ... I would give them [the two 
legislative branches] the unlimited power of pass- 
ing all laws without exception [like the British 
parliament.] ' " 

National or Federal ? 

The summarist continues: " In the discussion, 
in the Committee of the Whole, of the several 



1 6 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

plans which had been presented, the prevailing 
sentiment seemed to favor a * national ' system. 
Mr. Patterson's plan, looking to a continuance of 
a ' Federal ' system, was rejected in committee, 
and Mr. Randolph's was approved. It bristled all 
through with the word ' national,' and was preg- 
nant with centralization. The friends of a Federal 
system, of a union and government of States, 
and not of consolidated peoples, took the alarm, 
warned the States of their danger, advised them 
to look to their safety, called upon them to fill 
up their delegations with friends of liberty, and 
effectually aroused public sentiment ; so that when 
the great battle came on, in the convention, for 
rights against power, they were strong enough to 
conquer, and they did conquer. 

'*On the 20th of June, 1787, the question came up 
in the convention on Mr. Randolph's plan. Oliver 
Ellsworth of Connecticut promptly moved to 
amend the first resolution by striking out the 
words ' national government,' and inserting in 
lieu thereof, the words ' government of the United 
States.' So strongly had the friends of the States 
mustered, and so powerful was public sentiment, 
that the nationalists made no opposition, and the 
amendment* was unanimously carried. This set- 
tled the question ; the victory was won, and lib- 
erty was saved. Then right on, day after day, the 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 1/ 

word * nationar was stricken out wherever it 
occurred, and some other form of expression, in- 
dicating the Federal origin and character of the 
system, was substituted.'* 

Instead of '' national government,'' the plural 
United States is used, and in other instances the 
words " the Union '' and ^' this Union '' occur in the 
Constitution. Both were adopted as republican 
substitutes. They were opposed by the "- strong 
government men,'* as they were called at that 
day, and who had made a united effort to secure 
a majority of deputies from the thirteen States. 

Who was Ed77nmd Randolph ? 

He was an eminent lawyer of Virginia, and 
warmly espoused the war for independence. Hav- 
ing filled several honorable offices of the Com- 
monwealth, he was elected to Congress in 1779, 
and held his seat until 1782. In 1787 he was a 
member of the convention which framed the 
Constitution of the United States, voted against 
the adoption of the instrument, but in the Virginia 
convention urged its ratification, Mr. Randolph 
was chosen Governor of Virginia the succeeding 
year. In 1789 he was appointed Attorney-General 
of the United States, and in 1794 Secretary of 
State, which he resigned the year following. He 
departed this life September 12, 1813. 



1 8 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Mr. Randolph had great command of language 
and a voice of exceeding oratorical music. To 
these were to be added fine manners, portliness of 
person, and handsome features. He was thirty- 
four when he sat in convention. 

Who was Oliver Ellsworth ? 

A decentralist of Connecticut, and a deputy to 
the "" Federal convention.'' 

President Washington appointed him second 
Chief-Justice of the United States, and favored 
him as a successor in the presidential office. Mr. 
Ellsworth had been a member of the old Con- 
gress, and was a logical and convincing debater 
there and in the convention. He was cautious, 
self-possessed, retiring, but always independent in 
the expression of his opinions. He came to conclu- 
sions with great deliberation, and stood by them, 
but with gentlemanly tenacity. Although but 
forty-two, his rich political experience made him 
very influential among older members. His feat- 
ures were striking and agreeable, while the lower 
portion of his face denoted will power, and his 
head gave assurance of intellectuality. 

Who was Charles Pinckney ? 

He was kinsman of Charles Cotesworth Pinck- 
ney, also a delegate from South Carolina to 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 9 

the convention. His precocity was remarkable. 
Twenty-seven years was his age, and yet he spoke 
with such force and occasional eloquence that his 
elders gave his argument great attention. He 
participated in the debates on all important meas- 
ures. Mr. Pinckney had served four years in the 
old Congress, was afterwards Governor of South 
Carolina, three times in the Senate of the United 
States, and Minister to Spain. He negotiated a 
treaty with Spain, in which that country re- 
nounced all right and title to the territory 
which the United States had purchased from 
France. 

Who was William Patterson ? 

A learned lawyer of New Jersey, and Attorney- 
General for ten years, and deputy from that 
State to the " Federal convention. " Subsequently 
he was a Senator of the United States when the 
Constitution went into operation, and Justice of 
the Supreme Court. His plan of government 
brought him into much prominence in the con- 
vention. 

W/io was Alexander Hamilton ? 

A native of St. Nevis, West Indies, born in 
1756. He was a soldier of the Revolution, an 
accomplished jurist, an orator, fervid, logical, and 



20 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

pathetic. He was but thirty years of age when 
in the convention, but exhibited wonderful matu- 
rity. Although in size the smallest man in the 
convention, he was often the largest in mental 
prowess. 

New York had lost her vote by the defection 
of two of Hamilton's colleagues, yet he remained 
to help as he could the framers in their arduous 
labors. 

He was appointed first Secretary of the Treas- 
ury by Washington, and ended his life in a duel 
with Aaron Burr. Of the eighty-odd numbers of 
the ^^ Federalist,'' Hamilton wrote fifty-five, John 
Jay five, and Madison the rest. Curiously enough, 
biographers name as Hamilton's birthplace three 
islands, viz. : St. Kitt's, St. Croix, and St. Nevis, 
of the Lesser Antilles. 

What was the vice of the Confederation ? 

The States ordained, during war, in the Articles 
of Confederation, which was the first Constitution 
of the United States, a '^ perpetual Union," which 
in peace made them restive. They had asserted 
and achieved their freedom, independence, and 
sovereignty. No amendment could be made to 
the Articles unless by the unanimous consent of 
the States. Bondage was unendurable. The Ar- 
ticles of Confederation, having superseded the 



OF THE UNITED STATES, ' 21 

authority of Congress, had control over war and 
peace, yet exercised only advisory powers, being 
dependent on the States for executory coopera- 
tion. 

The Articles did not provide for an executive 
or a judicial department. In civil matters, such 
as the collection of revenue, they were powerless 
as the States were powerful. 

The Philadelphia convention proceeded to re- 
form the vice of the Confederation by ordaining 
three coordinate departments of government, viz.: 
the legislative, executive, and judicial. Amend- 
ments were provided for by a vote of three-fourths 
of the States, whereas the Articles required, as 
before stated, unanimous consent. 

What does the preamble mean by '^ a more perfect 
Union *' ? 

It means that ''perpetual Union*' not having 
saved the Confederacy from the peril of dissolu- 
tion, a more '' perfect Union,'' based on mutual 
consent and compromise, would be the salvation 
of the States-Union, or the United States, as a 
grand confederation of equal and co-equal States, 
and both immediately and remotely '* establish 
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for 
the common defence, promote the general wel- 
fare, and secure the blessings of Hberty." 



22 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

What was the fallacious argument of Chief- 
Justice Chase ? 

In the celebrated case of Texas vs. White (7 
Wall. 700), decided by the Supreme Court after 
the war, Chief- Justice Chase said : 

** The Union of the States never was a purely 
artificial and arbitrary relation. ... It received 
definite form and character and sanction by the 
Articles of Confederation. By these the Union 
was solemnly declared to be perpetual. And 
when these Articles were found to be inadequate 
to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution 
w^as ordained to form ^ a more perfect Union.' It 
is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity 
more clearly than by these words. What can be 
indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more per- 
fect, is not ? But the perpetuity and indissolu- 
bility of the Union by no means implies the loss 
of distinct and individual existence^ or of the 
right of self-government by the States. ... It 
may not be unreasonably said that the preserva- 
tion of the States and the maintenance of their 
governments are as much within the design and 
care of the Constitution as the preservation of the 
Union and maintenance of the national govern- 
ment. The Constitution in all its provisions looks 
to an indestructible Union, composed of inde- 
structible States. When, therefore, Texas be- 



^ OF THE UNITED STATES. ' 23 

came one of the United States she entered into 
an indissoluble relation. . . . There was no 
place for reconsideration or revocation except 
through revolution or through consent of the 
States. Considered, therefore, as transactions 
under the Constitution, the ordinance of seces- 
sion adopted by the convention, and ratified by a 
majority of the citizens of Texas, was absolutely 
null, and utterly without operation in law. The 
obligations of the State as a member of the Union, 
and of every citizen of the State as a citizen of 
the United States, remained perfect and unim- 
paired. The State did not cease to be a State, 
nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union/' — See 
also the cases of White vs. Hart (13 Wall. 646) 
and Keith vs. Clark (97 U. S. 451). 

W/ia^ were the comments of James Bryce in his 
^^ Am^erican Commonwealth'''? 

^' As respects the argument that the Union es- 
tablished by the Constitution of 1788 must be per- 
petual, because it is declared to have been designed 
to make a previous perpetual Union more per- 
fect, it may be remarked, as matter of history, that 
this previous Union [that resting on the Articles 
of Confederation] had not proved perpetual, but 
was, in fact, put an end to by the acceptance, in 
1788, of the new Constitution by the nine States 



24 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

who first ratified that instrument. After that 
ratification the Confederation was dead, and the 
States of North Carolina and Rhode Island, which 
for some months refused to come into the new 
Union, were clearly out of the old one, and stood 
alone in the world. May it not, then, be said that 
those who destroyed a Union purporting to be 
perpetual were thereafter estopped from holding 
it to have been perpetual, and from founding on 
the word ^ perpetual ' an argument against those 
who tried to upset the new Union in i86t, as the 
old one had been upset in 1788? The answer to 
this way of putting the point seems to be to 
admit that the proceedings of 1788 were in fact 
revolutionary. In ratifying their new Constitu- 
tion in that year, the nine States broke through 
and flung away their previous compact, which pur- 
ported to have been made forever. But they did 
so for the sake of forming a better and more en- 
during compact, and their extra-legal action was 
amply justified by the necessities of the case.'' — 
'* American Commonwealth,*' vol. i., page 316. 

Mr. James Bryce, Member of Parliament from 
Aberdeen, Scotland, in his two volumes, shows 
himself to be a born nationalist. In his just criti- 
cism of the Chase opinion, he failed to see that 
the Chief-Justice was as bitter against Jeffer- 
sonianism as old Cato was against Carthage. No 



OF THE UNITED STATES. ' 2$ 

Chief-Justice has been so partisan and nation- 
alistic. 

WAat is meant by *' We^ the people '' ? 

Originally it was intended that the preamble to 
the present Constitution should read: ** We, the 
people of the States of New Hampshire [naming 
each of the thirteen States] ... do ordain 
and establish this Constitution." That was re- 
garded as tautological by Gouverneur Morris and 
others, as the names of each State are recited in 
Article I. immediately following. So the phrase, 
*^We, the people of the United States,'' or, in- 
verted, the States United, for specific purposes, 
was adopted. The absence of Rhode Island was 
another reason for omitting the names of the 
States. She might never ratify. The overture 
to a great production of the master's is, however, 
of inconsiderable moment compared with the 
body of the artistic work which follows. The 
preamble may be dismissed with the observation, 
that a State is a corporation, a constitution its 
charter, and the people the corporators. '* We, 
the people of the United States," means '' We, the 
people of the several States." 

What did David Br early say ? 

The Chief-Justice of New Jersey, the eminent 



26 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

David Brearly, one of the number who signed the 
Constitution, said in the convention : ** If thir- 
teen sovereign and independent States are to be 
formed into a nation, the States as States must 
be aboHshed, and the whole must be thrown into 
a hotchpot ; and when an equal division is made, 
there may be fairly an equality of representation. 
New Jersey will never confederate on the plan 
before the Committee. I would rather submit to 
a despot than such a fate." 

What did James Madison say ? 

In the '* Federalist '' Madison declares that the 
parties to the United States Constitution are the 
people, *• not as individuals composing one entire 
nation, but as composing the distinct and inde- 
pendent States." In the Virginia debates on 
ratification, Mr. Madison said : '' Who are parties? 
The people ; but not the people comprising one 
great body, but the people as comprising thirteen 
sovereignties." 

Who was James Madison ? 

The fourth President of the United States was 
born in King George County, Virginia, March 5 
[old style], 175 1, and died at Montpelier, Orange 
County, June 28, 1836, at eighty-five years. 
The writer remembers the profound respect which 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 2/ 

was paid by the whole country to the memory 
of the statesman. 

Mr. Madison was sent to Princeton, where he 
was educated under the care of Dr. Wither- 
spoon, the President, who told Jefferson that 
his pupil had never to his knowledge said or 
done an indiscreet thing in his whole collegiate 
residence. 

The young Virginian was a hard student, and 
injured his health by allowing himself but three 
hours of twenty-four to sleep. He literally lived 
among his books. He was a member of the first 
Constitutional Convention of Virginia, and also 
that of 1829. He served in the Congress of 1780, 
and in the legislature of his own State. In the 
convention which framed the Constitution of the 
United States he was invaluable, constant in 
attendance, engaging often in debate, devising, 
suggesting, and creating. Like Hamilton, he was 
in mind far in advance of his years. He was the 
author of twenty-nine papers in the '' Federalist," 
which assisted in the ratification of the Constitu- 
tion, and of parts of the Bill of Rights. 

Both Madison and Hamilton, by timely sug- 
gestions, assisted Washington in preparing the 
"Farewell Address/' The last written advice of 
Madison was that '' the Union of the States be 
cherished and perpetuated.'' 



28 CA TECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

What did Hamilton say ? 

He called the States, " societies of men ; " the 
Union, an association of States. 

What did John Marshall say ? 

The great Chief-Justice said, in McCullough vs. 
Maryland (4 Wharton, 403): '' It is true that they 
[the people] assemble in their several States, and 
where else should they have assembled ? No 
political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of 
breaking down the lines which separate the States, 
and of compounding the American people into, 
one common mass.'* This was in 1819. 

What was Story s idea ? 

In 1833 Justice Story wrote his " Commentaries 
on the Constitution." He argued in favor of so 
compounding ; and Daniel Webster, in his splen- 
did reply to Hayne, invoked the flag of the United 
States as the canopy of a people consolidated or 
compacted into a nation. The legacy of Story 
and Webster helped to bring on the unfortu- 
nate and terrible war between the States. 

Is it proper to use the names '^America'' and 
'-''American citizens '' ? 

It is not. History and geography repudiate 
** America.*' It is an invention of the consolida- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 2g 

tionists. The Constitution calls our confederacy 
"The United States ^/America." Ours was the 
first United States of the Western Hemisphere, 
called North and South America. We are not 
American citizens, but citizens of the several 
States and of the United States. We are New 
Yorkers, Pennsylvanians, Marylanders, Virginians, 
North and South Carolinians, Georgians, etc., 
primarily. 

Should the words ^' nation^' and '^ nationaV be 
used when speaking of the United States ? 

By no means. The framers of the Constitu- 
tion carefully avoided the words '^ nation '' and 
** national.'' They desired to avoid the vice of 
the British government. 

What distinguishes the United States from Euro- 
pean nationalities ? 

The federative system. Judge J. Randolph 
Tucker of Virginia says that the United States 
are " democratic republican in government ; " and, 
again, a '' Federal government," that is, " one in 
whose organism States are factors, and through 
which States act with united powers as constit- 
uents." 

What is a nation ? 

The word is an exotic. Its derivative, ** nation- 
al," is also foreign. Both have crept into our 



30 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

political vocabulary. They can never be natural- 
ized if the Constitution is patriotically observed. 
But that little pamphlet, which embodies the wis- 
dom of our fathers, is seldom consulted, rarely 
studied by men in authority. Now for a direct 
answer to the foregoing question : 

A nation is a sovereign body, having and know- 
ing no limitations, with only one code of laws and 
a homogeneous population. These United States 
have forty-five State governments, thirteen of 
which possessed original sovereignty, and a general 
government as an agency. This general govern- 
ment, the name of which is the Government of the 
United States, being created by the States, is but 
an extension of their own powers severally, which 
doctrine was held by Jefferson, and can be and 
has been modified by amendments, ratified by the 
creators of the same. Three-fourths of the States 
can amend at any time the Constitution of the 
United States, which proves that the general 
government has no original sovereignty. 

The government of the United States is not, as 
Mr. Lincoln said at Gettysburg, a ^^ government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people.'' 
That presupposes but one government. The true 
doctrine is : The general government is a govern- 
ment of the States, by the States, and for the 
people of the States. 



OF THE UNITED STATES, ' 3 1 

Careless or ignorant writers and speakers forget, 
or do not know, that the words " The United 
States" are defined in the Constitution as plural. 
** No title of nobility shall be granted by the 
United States ; and no person holding any office 
of profit or trust under them^' is the language of 
the ninth section of the first article. *^ Treason 
against the United States shall consist only in 
levying war against them^ or adhering to their 
enemies,'' is the language of the third section 
of the third article. '' Treaties made, or which 
shall be made, under their authority,'* are the 
words of section 2, Article III. '' The United 
States shall guarantee to every State in this 
Union a republican form of government, and 
shall protect each of them against invasion," is 
the phraseology of section 4, Article IV. In 
Article XI. the language is : '' The judicial power 
of the United States shall not be construed to 
extend to any suit of law or equity commenced 
or prosecuted against one of the United States 
by citizens of another State," etc. 

The late war changed no salient feature of our 
great confederation of equal and co-equal States. 
It only abolished slavery and conferred suffrage 
on negroes in general terms. The thirteenth 
amendment declares : '' Neither slavery nor invol- 
untary servitude," etc., " shall exist within the 



32 CA TECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

United States, or any place subject to their juris- 
diction/* 

The Constitution of the United States, in the 
first article, limits the Congress of the United 
States to ^' all legislative powers herein granted^ 
And, in the first ten amendments, or Bill of Rights, 
it is declared that, ^''T\\^ powers not delegated to 
the United States by the Constitution, nor pro- 
hibited by it to the States, are reserved to the 
States respectively, or to the people.'* 

Our Presidents, until late years, did not call the 
general government "' a nation ; *' and to call such 
a creation '' the nation,** and capitalize the word 
'* nation,*' as is now common, is the grossest cen- 
tralism. 

Washington called the District of Columbia 
** Federal property ; ** Jefferson spoke of our 
** Federal or general government ; '* Madison, 
of ''' the various forms of our extended Confeder- 
acy ; ** John Quincy Adams, of the ** constitutional 
powers of the Federal government ; ** Jackson, 
of the patronage of the "- Federal government,** 
and of the ^^ general government;" Van Buren, 
of the ^^ concerns of the whole Confederacy ; '* Wil- 
liam H. Harrison, of the ^^ powers that have been 
granted to the Federal government ; '* Tyler, of 
the " office of President of this Confederacy ; '* 
Polk, of the *' safeguard of our Federative com- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 33 

pact ; '* Pierce, of the *' sole reliance of the Con- 
federacy ; " Buchanan, of the '' construction of the 
Federal Constitution ; " and Arthur, speaking to 
a foreign embassy, used the plural '' them *' and 
*' their '* when alluding to the United States. 

Noah Webster, in the first preface to his great 
Dictionary, ignores a centralized government. He 
says : *^ With our present constitutions of gov- 
ernment, escheat can never have its feudal sense 
in the United States/' 

*' In many cases, the nature of our governments 
and of our civil institutions requires an appro- 
priate language in the definition of words, even 
when the words express the same thing in Eng- 
land/* 

** A great number of words in our language re- 
quire to be defined in a phraseology accommo- 
dated to the condition and institutions of the 
people of these States," etc. 

*' The United States commenced their existence 
under circumstances wholly novel and unexampled 
in the history of nations. They commenced with 
civilization, with learning, with science, with con- 
stitutions of free government, and with that best 
gift of God to man, the Christian religion. Their 
population is now equal to that of England." 

It will be observed that Dr. Webster regards 
our Union of sovereign States as a confederation. 

3 



34 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

His suggestive preface is not to be found in some 
editions of his Dictionary to-day ! He left it ; 
the enemies of free governnients have omitted it. 

What are abuses of the Constitution ? 

It is common now to speak and write of the 
United States as *'this government" and '^ the 
nation/' and supplement the abuse of the Consti- 
tution by the use of such misnomers as *^ national 
Executive '' and '' Chief Magistrate of the nation/' 
for simple President of the United States; and to 
prefix ^'your Excellency" or ^' his Excellency/' 
when at the First Congress under the new Con- 
stitution, held in the city of New York, a joint 
resolution was passed, which has never been 
repealed, utterly ignoring the above titles, and 
enacting that the choice of the electors of the 
States shall be simply addressed as the '' President 
of the United States." It is common in some 
quarters to speak of the President as the '' ruler 
of the nation " or the "' ruler of a free people," as 
if any people can be said to be free who tolerates 
a ruler or master. It is common to speak of 
Congress as the '' national Congress" and '' na- 
tional legislature," when the name of that body 
is simply the Congress of the United States; and 
no other name is to be found in the Constitution. 

In the convention of 1787 '^national legisla- 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 35 

ture " was proposed as a name for Congress, and 
at once rejected. We have the kindred errors of 
the '' national Capitol," meaning the edifice in 
which the Congress meets annually, and also 
'' capital " instead of the " seat of government of 
the United States," the words of the Constitu- 
tion ; and of '' Congressmen," as distinguished 
from Senators in Congress. The Constitution 
knows only the equality and co-equality of " mem- 
bers of Congress," or Senators and Representa- 
tives. 

The aristocratic title '' Honorable " applied to 
Congressmen is as unconstitutional as the title 
^' your Honor " applied to judges of courts, and 
that of *' Excellency " applied to governors of 
States. The Constitution abhors titles. See pro- 
hibition in Article I., sections 9 and 10. 

As it is common to use language not found in the 
Constitution, we hear and read of the ^^ national 
Supreme Court," instead of the Supreme Court 
of the United States; also *' national banks;" 
and Senator Blair did his best to establish a '' na- 
tional " system of education ! The "' National 
Soldiers' Hotne " is a modern misnomer. But 
perhaps the misnomer of misnomers is found in 
the use of the words '' National State Guards," 
which is applied to State troops for local or home 
rule defence, and ** National Insane Asylum " ! 



36 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

What is the crownmg nationalism ? 

Arlington, the former home of George Wash- 
ington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George 
Washington, was converted into a cemetery 
for the burial of United States soldiers, and 
named '' National Cemetery/' The battle-field 
of Chickamauga has become a '' National Military 
Park," and belongs to the United States by the 
consent of Georgia. 

Even the magnificent domain which ought to 
be known as Yellowstone Park is called the 
^' National Park/' And alike over the sad graves 
of soldiers, and over the wonderful parkland in 
the heart of this confederation of equal and co- 
equal sovereign States, waves the '^ national 
flag " as the symbol of the '' nation " ! 

Long after this protest was written, the Supreme 
Court of the United States said that in speaking 
of the United States the plural should be used ; 
and ^' it is entirely proper to speak of these United 
States/' What else could be said ? It is worthy 
of remark that in receiving Ambassador Eustis at 
the Elysee, Paris, President Carnot spoke of the 
" United States nation " ! Europe has been bad- 
ly taught by the centralists. 

What is a President of the United States? 
Simply an executive agent and servant of the 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 2)7 

States for a term of four years. He is not called 
by his countrymen to the presidential chair, but 
by the States, through their appointed electors. 

George Mason, of Gunston Hall, Va., argued in 
the convention that the President should hold his 
official trust for seven years, and thereafter be in- 
eligible. Jefferson said : ^' I wish that at the end 
of four years the convention had made the Presi- 
dent forever ineligible for a second term.'' Had 
Mr. Jefferson been elected by the States, through 
their electors, instead of by the House of Repre- 
sentatives, it is fair to say that one term would 
have completely satisfied him. The controversy 
with Burr stirred him to seek a vindication by 
the States, through the electoral college. So he 
served a second term. 

One term would help to make a faithful Presi- 
dent. We have, instead, save in a few instances, 
huckstering politicians. Mr. Lowndes of South 
Carolina well said that the '' Presidency is an 
honor which is neither to be sought nor de- 
clined." 

What is a present remedy for a growing presi- 
dential evil ? 

Article H., section 2, says that " the Con- 
gress may by law vest the appointment of 
such inferior officers as they think proper in 



38 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

the President alone, in the courts of law, or 
in the heads of departments." The President has 
too much patronage. Departmental officers must 
meet with his approbation, from clerk to jani- 
tor. The framers of the Constitution mean by 
'^the courts of law" the supreme and inferior 
courts of the United States. Try the judges. 
They are not elective, and ought not to be par- 
tisan. Great patronage is the dower of kings. 
Presidents should be free from its inviting cor- 
ruption. 

What is really the popular branch of the Federad 

government ? 

A late writer makes the following remarks : 
'' The only officers of the general government 
chosen by the suffrage of the whole people are 
the President and Vice-President. This was not 
the intention of the framers of the Federal Con- 
stitution. The Constitution leaves the members 
of the electoral college free to elect any properly 
qualified citizen to the Presidency and Vice-Presi- 
dency ; but, as every one knows, they really vote 
under inviolable instructions. It is true that a 
popular majority does not always secure the suc- 
cess of a presidential ticket ; but the electoral col- 
lege is constituted upon a far more popular basis 
than the Senate. The electoral vote of a great 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 39 

State, like New York, for instance, cannot be 
offset by that of Nevada, though in the Senate 
New York and Nevada have precisely the same 
numerical strength. In any case, it may be said 
that the President has been chosen by a general 
election. He does not represent merely one 
State or one congressional district. The execu- 
tive branch is, therefore, the most popular branch 
of the general government. 

'' It is well, sometimes, to be reminded of this 
fact, especially when the President's public policy 
is persistently opposed by a congressional majority 
— a condition which has occurred repeatedly in 
the history of this country.'' 

What is the oath of a President of the United 
States ? 

'' I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will 
faithfully execute the office of President of the 
United States, and will, to the best of my 
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Consti- 
tution of the United States." No mention of a 
''nation" or ''national government." To "pre- 
serve, protect, and defend " is to use only 
constitutional names and language in every pub- 
lic utterance and document, and emphasize them 
by appropriate acts, as well as to execute the laws 
within his jurisdiction. Yet one of our ablest 



40 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION • 

Presidents and statesmen lately wrote : '*' The na- 
tion's strength is in her people ; the nation's pros- 
perity is in their prosperity ; the nation's glory is 
in the equality of her justice ; the nation's per- 
petuity is in the patriotism of her people." The 
same writer, alluding to the assassination of Presi- 
dent Carnot of France, called these United States 
^* the American nation." 

The following is a centralizing prayer from a 
well-known rabbi at a banquet : ^' If Thou didst 
call thy chosen people thy servant, is not also 
this great nation thy servant? If this nation 
finds its earth task in showing mankind the ad- 
ministration of human government in accordance 
with thy laws, shall it not attain a crown of last- 
ing glory?" 

Why are such utterances misleading ? 

Because they violate, unintentionally, of course, 
both the letter and spirit of the constitutions of 
the several States and of the United States. Fur- 
ther, such unconstitutional expressions educate 
the young men of the country in European meth- 
ods of centralization. They lead up to one man 
and despotism. 

Can the President adjourn Congress ? 

*' He may," says Article II., section 3, "on 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 4I 

extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses or 
either of them, and, in case of disagreement be- 
tween them with respect to the time of adjourn- 
ment, he may adjourn them to such time as he 
shall think proper/' The evident meaning is that 
the President can only adjourn Congress when 
Congress, in special session, cannot adjourn them- 
selves, which is a fit conclusion of ** extraordinary 
occasions/' This clause of section 3 relates solely 
to extra sessions. It is not to be understood as 
infringing upon the time fixed by law for regular 
sessions. The Constitution names the second 
Monday of December, but Congress may appoint 
a different day. 

Ca7t Congress order a general quarantine ? 

No. In the enumerated powers of Congress 
not a word can be found that authorizes the 
enactment of a general quarantine. The matter 
of quarantine belongs to the reserved rights of 
the States. The creation of a ** national quaran- 
tine " is absurd. We have sugared our tea with 
this ** national " misnomer so long that it becomes 
nauseating. In the late conflict of the general 
government with the health officers of the State 
of New York, the former justly suffered. The 
State of New York owns the water approaches 
to the city of New York, and had the right to 



42 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

declare what foreign vessels from infected ports 
should not cast anchor in the docks. It is the duty 
of Congress to keep such approaches unobstructed. 
Congress have no power over quarantine, save when 
it relates to the navy-yards and other sea-coast 
property of the United States. 

Is there a constitutional holiday ? 

Certainly not. The machinery of the govern- 
ment of the United States moves perpetually. 
The Constitution, Article II., section i, clause 4, 
says : ^' The Congress may determine the time of 
choosing the electors, and the day on which they 
shallgive their votes ; which day shall be the same 
throughout the United States/' After depositing 
his vote the carpenter may return to his plane, 
the merchant to his counter. There is no suffrage 
holiday, nor can courts of justice be closed on the 
day of ^'choosing electors.'* Each State may 
make a holiday of any day, but the United States 
have no constitutional authority to do so for the 
States. Uniformity in the day of voting for elect- 
ors is simply to prevent corruption of the count 
and undue influence by unscrupulous officials. 
The United States have no i;eligion. Neither has 
a State. Our systems of government are secular, 
and, as such, a departure from European and 
Asiatic methods. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 43 

What is tneant by ex post facto law ? 

The Supreme Court of the United States held, 
in Calder vs. Bull, 3 Dallas, that the prohibition 
to pass an ex post facto law meant every law that 
made an act done before the passing of the law, 
and which was innocent when done, criminal. 
Also, a law which aggravated a crime, and made 
it greater than it was when committed, or which 
altered the legal rules of evidence, and received 
less or different proof than the law required at the 
time of the commission of the offence, so as to 
convict the person arraigned as an offender. An 
ex post facto law the same court held, in Fletcher 
vs. Peck, 6 Cranch, was one which rendered an act 
punishable in a manner in which it was not punish- 
able at the time of its commission. The prohibition 
applies both to Congress and State legislatures. 
Such a restriction is essential to the just administra- 
tion of government and the liberty of the people. 

Is there constitutional authority to change the 
name or orthography of any place recognized by 
the States ? 

The power granted by the States to the United 
States, in the Constitution, *' to establish post 
offices and post roads," is latitudinously inter- 
preted. It was never intended to give authority 
to the Postmaster-General to alter the names or 



44 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

the orthography of post offices which were and 
are recognized by the several States. 

During President Harrison's term the Postmas- 
ter-General altered the significant and historical 
name of Newport's News to Newport News. It 
was so called by colonists, on hearing of coming 
succor from Governor Newport. Appomattox, 
also a Virginia village, was named Surrender by 
President Cleveland's Postmaster-General. Public 
clamor compelled a restoration of the historic 
name. The old historic city of Newburgh on 
the Hudson was put down in the Federal post- 
office records at Washington as/^ Newburg; " but 
the citizens clung to the spelling always recognized 
in New York State documents, '' Newburgh." 

Congress has no right to interfere with the 
names of places in the several States. They only 
have jurisdiction of names in Territories and no- 
where else. It is not only absurd, but a usurpa- 
tion which ought to be promptly rebuked, for 
a Potsmaster-General to change the name or 
orthography of any town written in State or 
county judicial records, or incorporated by the 
legislature. The power once admitted may lead 
to serious abuse. 

What is the flag theory of the States- Union ? 
The flag of the United States was intended to 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 45 

be hoisted on their forts, arsenals, and other build- 
ings, and on territory belonging to the United 
States, and on their vessels of war, and over the 
army controlled by them. 

The several State flags, such as the blue flag of 
Virginia and the white flag of New York, were 
intended to be raised over State troops, and wave 
over State buildings. 

When the President, in the name of all the 
States, makes requisition on the individual States 
for troops for the "• common defence,'' it was in- 
tended that each contingent should be mustered 
under its State flag into the service of the Union. 
During war the flag of the United States should 
only be used as the symbol of Union ; and when 
hostilities ceased, State troops should be returned 
to their governors and resume their State flags. 

No mention is made of a flag of the Union in 
the Constitution. It is an omission. 

Is it proper to speak of '' the State and Nation '' ? 

It is not. The phrase is a growing absurdity. 
The States now number forty-five, and more will 
be admitted. Each has a coat of arms, and each 
has its methods of self-government, which differ 
widely from each other in many respects. States 
must have and preserve '^ a republican form of 
government.'' That is their compact as united 



46 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

sovereigns. It has been shown that the United 
States are not a nation. 

What is meant by the House of Representatives of 
the United States ? 

The people of the States in council. The 
House protects majorities. 

What is the Speaker of the House ? 

The presiding officer of the people of the States 
in council. When the election of President is 
referred by the States to the people, the House 
resolve themselves into a special council of the 
people of the States, and then vote as States, 
separately. 

What of the Vice-Presidency and the Senate ? 

Article H., section 3, says: '^ The electors 
shall meet in their respective States, and vote 
by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of 
whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the 
same State with themselves.*' The inhibition is 
without reservation or qualification. There is no 
ambiguity here. The electors are not to vote for 
two inhabitants of the same State for President 
and Vice-President. It means partial disfran- 
chisement for any attempt of the citizens of one 
State to monopolize two executive offices at the 
same time, and during prescribed terms. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 47 

As Article II. originally stood, the section did 
not name "President and Vice-President/' but 
** two persons," to be balloted for. The tie vote 
and fierce struggle between Jefferson and Burr 
caused the adoption of the amendment which spe- 
cifically sets forth how separate ballots shall be 
cast for President and Vice-President, In case of 
no election, the Senate chooses a Vice-President. 

So much for the letter. The spirit, which is the 
very life of the letter, suggests that the equality 
and co-equality of the small States will become im- 
paired if a large and populous commonwealth is 
permitted to have at the same moment, and dur- 
ing four years, two of her citizens in the first and 
second executive offices of the United States. 
One of them must be held to be ineligible in his 
own State. Necessarily the Vice-President would 
be discarded, as the ballot for President has elec- 
toral precedence. 

The Vice-Presidency seems to have been of little 
importance to the framers of the unamended Con- 
stitution. 

Dr. Franklin called the Vice-President '' his 
superfluous Excellency.'' 

What is meant by the Senate of the United States ? 

The States in council. The Senate protects 
minorities. Because States are constituents of 



48 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Presidents, and in a confederation eacH member 
should be equal and co-equal, and as each State 
was a priori sovereigti, the smaller States are 
represented by two Senators, as are the larger and 
largest. The Senate arose from the necessity of 
compromise and union. 

What is the balance-wheel? 

No law can be enacted unless a majority of 
States and a majority of the people of the States 
concur. This prevents the States as corporate 
bodies from dominating the people who are cor- 
porators, and the people from dominating the 
States as corporations. 

During the Articles of Confederation, States 
only voted. They were equal, as under the pres- 
ent Constitution. Nine States could pass a law. 
The keen eyes of Ellsworth, Sherman, and John- 
son saw the vice, and insisted that Congress should 
be made bicameral. Two Houses of Congress 
were created; one House representing the numeri- 
cal force of States, and the other the equipollency 
of States. What New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Virginia lose by the smaller States in the Senate, 
they regain by powerful representation in the 
House. 

The idea of a Senate and House, as now con- 
stituted, was suggested by the *^ Connecticut sys- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 49 

tern'' (since 1699) of two legislative Houses; one 
representing the equality of the tov/ns, the other 
the whole people. 

What of equality in the Senate ? 

It is an irrepealable provision of the Constitu- 
tion that " No State, without its consent, shall be 
deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." — 
See Article V. 

For what cause can a member of Congress be 
expelled? 

With the concurrence of two-thirds, each House 
can expel a member for disorderly behavior. 
This punishment is temporary, and intended 
solely to defend the dignity of the people in 
council and the States in council. There is no 
authority to inquire into the personal history of a 
Senator or Representative before election. It is 
presumed that the several States and the people 
select with a view to their wants. Their will is 
sovereign. Neither House can resolve itself into 
a criminal court to try members for alleged 
offences against the laws of any State or Terri- 
tory. That is a matter for the courts of law. 

What are superior and inferior officers ? 

All officers appointed by the President '' by, and 



50 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

with the advice and consent of the Senate/' are 
to be held as superior ; and such as are appointed 
solely by the President at any time and without 
tenure, are inferior. 

What is the purpose of the taxing power of 
Congress ? 

It is stated in the enumeration of the first 
article of the Constitution: ''To pay the debts, 
and provide for the common defence and general 
welfare of the United States." 

How are these things to be done ? 

Congress is given the authority to '' lay and 
collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises," limited 
solely to the economical wants of the United 
States. Jefferson resigned the portfolio of Secre- 
tary of State because he would not agree with 
Hamilton, then Secretary of the Treasury, that a 
latitudinous protective tariff construction should 
be given the words, '' the general welfare." Mani- 
festly, the purpose of taxation is limited, as in all 
enumerated authority. A tariff is a tax levied to 
carry on the government of the United States. 
The words '' general welfare of the United States" 
show the limitation of Congress. 

Is a high protective tariff Constitutional? 

It is not, for the sufficient reason that the Con- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 5 1 

stitution IS not paternal. It was not ratified to 
protect and enrich individuals engaged in manu- 
facturing or other industries, but to secure spe- 
cific, economic, and limited support for all the 
States organized into a Union. The States have 
reserved powers with which to foster all industries 
within their boundaries. To infringe these inher- 
ent reserved rights of sovereigns, outrages equi- 
libration. 

What is legal tender ? 

Gold a7id silver coin. Mark, the Constitution 
does not say gold or silver coin. The framers 
were not monometallists, but bimetallists. In the 
first article, Congress is declared to possess the 
power to '' coin money, regulate the value thereof, 
and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of 
weights and measures.'* For convenience and for 
uniformity the States, in the same article, de- 
prived themselves of the right to " make anything 
but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of 
debts/' Of course, this ''gold and silver coin'' 
must be made or minted by the United States as 
united sovereigns. The framers of the Constitu- 
tion meant that the yellow and white metals 
should be at parity — gold, as the rarer metal, 
fixing the standard of silver — and no matter what 
might be the devices of speculators, the United 



52 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

States should maintain the equal standard of 
their stamped constitutional coin. In other 
countries, ^* coining money '' would be positive 
evidence of sovereignty, but it is a '' delegated '* 
power in our Union. 

How is equilibration further shown f 

By the passage of general and special measures 
in the House, by original bills for raising and ap- 
propriating public money, but more especially by 
the election of President of the United States ; the 
members as electors voting by States, while yet 
representing the people of the States, when the 
appointed electors have failed to make a choice in 
the electoral college. Thus the election of Pres- 
ident is transferred from the States to the people 
of the States, and by the people thereof relegated 
to the States again. 

Why, in such case, does the House vote as States ? 

For the reason that the constituents of Presi- 
dents of the United States are not men, but 
States. 

Why should the House originate money bills ? 

Because numbers are to be taxed, and numbers 
must give consent. States are not taxed. Article 
I., section 7, provides that all bills for raising 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 53 

revenue shall originate in the House, but the 
Senate or States may propose or concur with 
amendments, as on other bills. 

What about impeachment? 

States, not men, being constituents of a Presi- 
dent, therefore the people of the States in coun- 
cil, sitting as a grand jury, present an indictment 
in the form of articles of impeachment against 
him for high crimes and misdemeanors; but the 
States in council, sitting as a court, try him. The 
Chief-Justice presides, as the offence or offences 
are violations of the organic law. 

Says the Constitution: '' The Senate shall have 
the sole power to try all impeachments.'' Two- 
thirds of the members present can convict. 

Defect. — Who is to preside in the absence of 
the Chief-Justice ? If the Chief-Justice himself is 
impeached, what officer is to preside at the trial ? 
The Constitution is silent. It would seem that 
such an emergency might have called the atten- 
tion of the framers of the Constitution to the 
Speaker of the House and the Vice-President as 
presiding officers on the trial of the Chief-Justice. 

What are courts of. impeachment ? 

The States, in special judicial council, acting as 
united sovereigns. 



54 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

What is meant by the Supreme Court of the 
United States ? 

The court of last resort ; namely, the Supreme 
Court of the United States, to whom are delegated 
original and appellate powers. The Congress fixes 
the number of justices ; the President, as selecting 
agent of the United States, nominates; and the 
States in council confirm or reject nominees. 
The justices hold their offices during *' good be- 
havior,'* not for life, as is often stated. The Su- 
preme Court can declare an act of Congress, signed 
and promulgated by the President, unconstitu- 
tional and void. Men are transient. States are 
permanent. States, acting as united sovereigns, 
not men, construe the Constitution which they 
created. The Supreme Court are, then, the 
united sovereigns in final judicial council. 

Defect, — In representative governments there 
should be no "good behavior" tenures of office. 
It leads to life service. The jurisdiction of the 
Supreme Court should have been limited to deter- 
mining the constitutionality of a law of Congress 
and to '' international " questions. Latitudinous 
construction has caused the court to invade the 
legal rights of States. 

What is the dijference now between Senate and 
House ? 

In 1810 the Senate of the United States were a 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 55 

small body of but thirty-four members. They did 
not, for years, increase at all. For five years the 
Senators sat with closed doors. They did not 
legislate, as now, in competition with the House, 
but employed their time with appointments and 
treaties, and concurrence with the popular branch, 
and in conferences with the President and his 
Cabinet. It has been well said that the Senators 
regarded themselves then as ambassadors from 
sovereign States. CentraHzed nationalism was 
most obnoxious to them. Senators in those days 
frequently asked their legislatures for instructions. 
The functions and complexion of the Senate 
have undergone so great a change that, like the 
Federal Supreme Court, the members busy them- 
selves, with honorable exceptions, in interfering 
with the freedom and independence of the several 
States; and the House of Representatives, which 
represent the whole people, and up to 1842 was 
composed of members elected by the States at 
large, have become the custodian of the reserved 
rights, the general guardian and peerless champion 
of each and all of the sovereign States ! The 
people now declare from their Congressional dis- 
tricts that ours is not a nation at all. 

Why should not Senators be elected by numbers ? 
It would gradually help to destroy State auton- 



56 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

omy. It would break down the barriers that 
guard minorities. The smaller States would first 
suffer, then the larger. Numbers are already rep- 
resented in the House. Florida, in 1891, unani- 
mously rejected the proposition to make Senators 
elective by direct vote of the people. In brief, it 
would terminate the States in council, which was 
intended to be a conservative check on numbers 
in the House, and so impair the treaty-making 
and ratifying power. 

George Reid of Delaware moved that Senators 
should hold their office during good behavior. 
Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, 
seconded Reid, but it failed. The deputy from 
Delaware then desired to make the senatorial 
term nine years, one-third triennially retiring. 
That also failed. It was the desire of the anti- 
nationalists to limit the terms of Senators, and 
make them obey State instructions, so as to pre- 
vent misrepresentation in the States in council, 
but it failed. Six years makes the senatorial 
term too long, especially after the people of a 
State politically repudiate the party of a Senator. 

An effort is still (1895) being made to elect 
Senators by a direct vote of the people of the 
States, with a view to make bribery and corruption 
impossible. It is fallacious. The present system 
is not at fault. The fault is with the leaders who 



OF THE UNITED STATES. ' 57 

manufacture legislatures. If the '* places of 
choosing Senators " be altered, partisans will dom- 
inate the State polls by a congressional ^' elec- 
tions law." Senators are State officers, not officers 
of the United States. Said ex-Senator George F. 
Edmunds : 

^' The Senate always has been, and always will 
be, so long as constituted through election by the 
legislatures of the States, what John Adams 
called ^ the sheet anchor of the Republic* On 
the whole, it has been of invaluable service in the 
good government of this country. This attack 
upon the Constitution, and the House provision 
for the election of the Senators directly by the 
people, is an immense delusion, and an attempted 
disturbance of conservative balance, as the Senate 
is the feature that the makers of the Constitution 
intended to have most pronounced effect. The 
quality of men selected through popular vote is 
much more likely to reduce the quality of the 
body, as is perfectly obvious to any person who is 
at all read in the political history of this or other 
countries. 

^^ In one or two States it may be possible to 
secure two or three men to vote for a particular 
Senator by means of purchase, which is a particu- 
larly bad thing ; but it must be remembered that 
the men who manage that sort of thing can con- 



58 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

trol the primaries to choose delegates to a State 
convention more certainly than the members of 
any State legislature ever elected, and that the 
people may generally be relied upon to vote for 
the party nominee, good or bad. If the States of 
the Union have a wise regard for their own State 
independence and safety, they will preserve the 
election in their own legislative body as they pre- 
serve the making of laws." 

Is the Governor of a State superior to a Senator ? 

Both in dignity and in power. In 1891 the 
writer hereof thus defined the relative positions 
of Governor and Senator: Governor Hill, in leav- 
ing the gubernatorial chair, steps down consider- 
ably. The Governor of a State is far superior to 
a Senator of the United States. He is the first 
agent of a sovereign commonwealth and its peo- 
ple. He represents both the State as a corpora- 
tion and the people as corporators. As Senator 
a man represents the State as a corporation, be- 
cause the Representatives in Congress represent 
the people of the State. A Senator divides honor 
and power with his colleague. Thus Hill must 
divide with Hiscock, just as if the State as an 
entirety was divided into two senatorial halves. 

The question is asked, Is not Hill, while com- 
pleting his term as Governor, occupying two 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 59 

offices? The answer is, No ; because he cannot be 
a Senator until he takes the prescribed senatorial 
oath. The filing of credentials is a simple pre- 
liminary to the taking of that oath. 

It is noised about that the Committee on Privi- 
leges and Elections of the Senate at Washington 
will debate how long a Senator-elect can hold a 
State office after Congress has been convened. 
It would be a silly debate ; for although the Sen- 
ate can constitutionally judge of the qualifications 
of its members, that body cannot decide the other 
question. The decision rests with the State, 
which has an undeniable right to elect another 
man in place of a Senator-elect who persistently 
keeps away from Congress; and then the Senate 
can inquire into the qualifications of one or both, 
for they stand as contestants. 

A Governor of a State, in the absence of a 
legislature, can appoint himself to fill a temporary 
vacancy as Senator, providing he resigns the guber- 
natorial office after the act, and the Senate would 
be powerless to prevent him taking his seat. 

Such is the independence of the State, and 
such the limitation of the general government. 

How should treaties be made ? 

In the name of the United States, every State 
of the Union being separately mentioned as here- 



6o CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

tofore illustrated in the original treaties with 
France and Great Britain. In the treaties with 
Great Britain and France the thirteen Colonies 
by name are called '' free, sovereign, and inde- 
pendent States/' and as constituting in general 
terms the United States. Such form educates 
the officials and peoples of foreign countries in 
the essential fact that the United States '' are," 
and that treaties must be made with them^ there 
being no *^ national government.'' 

The early Spanish and late Italian controversies 
with the United States were prolonged, because 
Spain and Italy thought that they had signed 
treaties with a "' nation " similar to their own, the 
President being the chief ruler thereof. 

Naming the States in treaties defines the name 
of the United States, and by directly connecting 
them severally with the treaties connects them 
collectively with all infringements, and thus 
enables foreign delegated agents at Washington 
to act understandingly. 

The States in the Constitution denied them- 
selves the power to make treaties individually 
between themselves, and severally with foreign 
countries, because they ratified a treaty, namely 
the Constitution, which in certain enumerated 
grants speaks for them collectively. The powers 
of the United States are enumerated because 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 6 1 

delegated ; the powers which the States prohib- 
ited to themselves are few and specifically named. 
Reserved powers or rights inherent in the several 
States are not enumerated because too numerous, 
as they embrace all which secure '* life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness/* 

No treaty with a foreign power can be called 
** the supreme law of the land '' (Art. VI.), unless 
it follows the model of the Jay peace treaty with 
Great Britain. The States must be specially 
named as constituting united sovereigns, or the 
instrument is not drafted '' in pursuance '' of the 
letter and spirit " of the Constitution.'' Careless- 
ness, ignorance, and nationalism have misled 
European diplomats. See fourth question, in 
which is set forth the exact acknowledgment of 
George the Third. 

Are there two classes of citizens ? 

Yes. The Constitution provides that '^ No per- 
son except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of 
the United States at the time of the adoption 
of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office 
of President." In Article XII. of the Bill of 
Rights, it is provided that ^' No person constitu- 
tionally ineligible to the office of President shall 
be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United 
States." The men of the Revolution were ex- 



62 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

cepted, as their republican principles had been 
tried by every peril and sacrifice known to heroes 
and patriots. 

To-day no alien naturalized can be President 
or Vice-President. This makes a ^' natural born 
citizen of the United States " of the first class, 
he being eligible to the two highest executory 
ofifices of the Union, while naturalized citizens are 
excluded. 

Is ''a natural born citizen'" confined to the 
United States? 

It would seem so. Persons born abroad of 
parents native to this country are not by any 
provision of the Constitution declared to be ''na- 
tural born citizens." Constitutional enumerations 
are to be strictly interpreted and not subject to 
loose law and opinions. All persons born out- 
side of the United States are subject to the Presi- 
dential inhibition. 

Do the several States only make citizens and 
voters ? 

The United States have no power to create 
citizens or voters. Suffrage being a State reser- 
vation and the highest evidence of citizenship, it 
follows that the State courts should naturalize 
aliens. It was certainly never intended that an 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 63 

alien, ignorant of our language, and consequently 
of the Constitution of the State in which he 
resides and of the United States, should be made 
a citizen. Suffrage is based on intelligent under- 
standing of our institutions, their limitations and 
necessities. 

Suffrage is not a right, but a privilege. It can 
be modified, restricted, and even withdrawn in 
certain cases such as treason, felony, etc. There 
could be no modification, restriction, or with- 
drawal were it a right per se. The United States 
courts may assist, when convenient, the State 
courts in naturalization, because they are courts 
of record. It is permissible simply and based on 
the fact that there are citizens of the United 
States as United Sovereigns. 

Who are citizens of the Ujtited States ? 

The second Article of the Constitution, relating 
to Presidential eligibility, quoted in a preceding 
answer, refers to *' a citizen of the United States." 
In the original instrument such citizenship is not 
defined, but left to be construed as an extension 
of State citizenship. The Fourteenth Amend- 
ment says : '' All persons born or naturalized in 
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction 
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of 
the State wherein they reside.'* 



64 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Such was the generally admitted construction, 
prior to this amendment, as to the constitutional 
status of white persons. 

Abroad and on the high seas the United States 
protect their citizens ; at home the several States 
protect all citizens. The first is limited ; the 
second is unlimited within their police borders. 
Congress has power to *^ establish a uniform rule 
of naturalization " so as to prevent internecine 
conflicts. There the power of that body ceases. 
It follows that '' a uniform rule '' carries with it 
the right of a State to make citizens of aliens. 

What is a concise definition of a citizen of the 
United States ? 

The answer is : As the United States are but 
an extension of the governments of the several 
States, a citizen of the United States is but an 
extension of the privileges and immunities of a 
citizen of the several States. 

The Supreme Court have never decided with 
precision what are the privileges and immunities 
of a citizen of the United States. The constitu- 
tional fact is that while three-fourths of the States 
can abridge, and even withdraw, the aforesaid priv- 
ileges and immunities by amendment, the United 
States cannot abridge the privileges and immu- 
nities of a citizen of a State. This shows the fore- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 65 

going definition of a citizen of the United States 
to be correct, and it is strange that in the 
Slaughterhouse case there should have been 
majority and minority opinions as to what con- 
stituted such citizenship. 

Is there inter-State commerce ? 

No. The Act of Congress creating an " Inter- 
State Commerce Commission " ought to be re- 
garded as giving currency to unconstitutional 
language. ^^ The Congress shall have power to 
regulate commerce with foreign nations, and 
ainong (amidst) the several States, and with the 
Indian tribes,'' are the words of the Constitution. 
Mark the distinction. " Inter " means '' between/* 
and is not found in the enumeration of Article 
I., section 8. *' Among the several States," be- 
cause they have a compact which authorizes the 
regulation of commerce in their midst ; and '* with 
foreign nations " by special treaty ; and ^* with 
the Indian tribes," because commerce with them 
must be by special treaties, the United States 
holding them as tribal nations. 

Great care should be used in preserving the 
words and distinctions of the Constitution. The 
Supreme Court of the United States decided (Gib- 
bons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheaton) that the acts of the 
legislature of New York, granting to Livingston 
5 



66 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

and Fulton the exclusive navigation of the waters 
of the State, in vessels propelled by steam, were 
unconstitutional and void acts, and repugnant to 
the power given to Congress to regulate com- 
merce, so far as those acts went to prohibit vessels 
licensed under the laws of Congress, for carrying 
on the coasting trade, from navigating the waters 
of New York. 

Why ? Because the waters of the States, so far 
as commerce is concerned, are free to all the 
States, and are, in fact and practice, waters that 
run in the midst of them as forming the United 
States. Navigable rivers of great commercial im- 
portance run among, and not between. States. So 
do railroads and canals. There is coming to the 
front another phase of the Inter-State Commerce 
Act. Since the fulmination of one of the Justices 
of the Supreme Court, it is claimed that inter- 
State commerce law covers the loading and un- 
loading of foreign vessels at our ports, and any 
trouble with stevedores can be quelled by United 
States soldiers ! 

What about a congressional ^^ elections law " ? 

The Constitution declares, in Article I., section 
4, that the '* times, places, and manner of holding 
elections for Senators and Representatives shall 
be prescribed in each State by the legislature 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 6/ 

thereof/' This was intended to insure regular 
representation in Congress. It is an admission, 
also, of the sovereignty of the several States. 
The Constitution continues : '' But the Congress 
may at any time, by law, make or alter such regu- 
lations, except as to the places of choosing Sena- 
tors.'' This delegated power to '' make or alter 
such regulations " can only be used when a State 
fails to elect Senators and Representatives, and 
thus prevents a full representation in Congress. 

Defect. — It should have been added that when 
such State returns to its usage, the power of 
Congress shall instantly cease. The intent is 
plain to any thinker, but recent events have 
shown that partisans sometimes do not care to 
think constitutionally. The Senators and Repre- 
sentatives mentioned are presumably members of 
Congress. The clause does not say they are. 

Have the United States 7io supervisory power ? 

Assuredly not. They cannot supervise State 
elections. Each State chooses its own electors, 
Senators, and Representatives. The United 
States can erect no polling places within the 
States. Each House of Congress has only au- 
thority to ^' judge of the elections, returns, and 
qualifications of its own members " when as- 
sembled (Art. L, sec. 5). An '' elections law " or 



68 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

force bill has been well called by Murat Halstead 
"a belated fiction." 

What is the language of the United States ? 

The English language. Since the great addi- 
tions of our own lexicographers, Webster and 
Worcester, it may be called the Anglo-American 
tongue. The earliest legislatures, conventions, 
and debates of the^Congresses were conducted in 
English ; the Articles of Confederation were in 
that language ; the debates and the text of the 
Constitution of the United States are in English. 
In fine, all laws of the several Colonies, United 
Colonies, and of the United States have been 
promulgated in the all-conquering English or 
Anglo-American. Esto perpetua ! 

Has Co7igress power to acquire and police ^'' na- 
tional parks'' ? 

There is neither express nor implied power in 
the Constitution authorizing the acquisition of 
historical battle grounds, or other territory, for 
parks. The United States can only acquire sites 
for necessary buildings and grounds for actual 
and constant use, not for ornament. It is suicidal 
policy in the several States to give the general 
government unnecessary lodgment within their 
borders. The States should not part with a foot 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 69 

of their territory for sentiment. Military parks, 
under the supervision of the Secretary of War, 
are nurseries of consoHdation and nationalism, and 
aid in destroying civil government. 

What is the full title of the President ? 

The President of the United States of America. 
He should so sign public documents. (See Article 
II., sec. I.) 

How can States be divided ? 

The Constitution (Art. IV., sec. 3) declares: 
^' New States may be admitted by the Congress 
into this Union ; but no new State shall be 
formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any 
other State, nor any State be formed by the 
junction of two or more States, or parts of 
States, without the consent of the legislatures of 
the States concerned, as well as of the Congress.'* 
This saved the smaller States from the encroach- 
ment of, or absorption by, the large and populous 
States. 

During the war between the States, West Vir- 
ginia was, by a revengeful and partisan act of Con- 
gress, *' formed or erected within the jurisdiction " 
of Virginia, and without the consent of its legisla- 
ture. It is claimed to have been justified as a 
war measure. But the Constitution makes no 



^0 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

reservation. It vetoes at once and at all times 
the idea of the partition of a State unless by con- 
sent of its legislature. The erection of West 
Virginia was a bad precedent. There is no guar- 
antee that other partitions may not follow in the 
future. Every violation of the Constitution leads 
to a similar result, in the same or other directions. 

The magnificent cession by Virginia to the 
United States, and accepted in Congress assem- 
bled, March, 1784, of its portion of the great 
Northwest Territory, should have prevented its 
partition. This territory, save a narrow northern 
strip, composes the now powerful States of Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois. Virginia was followed by 
cessions of Northwest Territory belonging to 
Massachusetts in 1785, and Connecticut in 1786 
and 1800. 

Virginia made a deed to its northwestern do- 
main on strict conditions that it should be con- 
verted into States, and *' that the States so formed 
be distinct republican States, and admitted as 
members of the Federal Union, having the same 
right of sovereignty, freedom, and independence 
as the other States ; '' also, that the land should 
be held as a common fund for the use and ben- 
efit ^' of such of the United States as have or 
shall become members of the Confederation or 
Federal Alliance.*' Congress solemnly approved 



OF THE UNITED STATES. /I 

the provisions of the deed of cession by legisla- 
tive action. 

It was a crime to partition the grand old 
'* mother of States and of statesmen," whose Sic 
Semper Tyrannis is ^^ the proudest motto/' said 
the eloquent S. S. Prentiss, '' that ever blazed 
upon a warrior's shield or a country's arms." 

What is treason ? 

The Constitution defines it thus: ^^ Treason 
against the United States shall consist only in 
levying war against them, or in adhering to their 
enemies, giving them aid and comfort." This is 
also a clear definition of the Union called the 
United States. (See Art. II., Sec. i. ^^ the United 
States, or any of them." The^n, not //, is the ex- 
plicit plural. Treason, therefore, is a crime against 
united sovereigns^ not a sovereign. 

Can States commit treason? 

No. Equal States cannot rebel against equal 
States. Co-equal States cannot rebel against co- 
equal States. Sovereign States cannot rebel 
against sovereign States. Individuals acting in- 
dependently of their State can commit treason 
against the States-Union or the United States. 

In a strict constitutional sense, in 1861-65 there 
were no United States save those that were 



72 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

united to fight each other. They were nearly 
equal in number. Each party was in revolt 
against the Constitution. One repudiated it en- 
tirely and formed a new one ; the other disobeyed 
it while pretending to be guided by it, and as- 
serted that there was a ^'higher law." In 1865, 
after the battle of the Titans, the disunited States 
became again the United States of America. 

Reconstruction was a mad partisan effort to pre- 
vent harmonious reunion. It failed. To-day the 
Union is consent. States cannot be arrested, im- 
prisoned, tried, and reduced to territories, and re- 
admitted into the Union they constructed. Once 
a State always a State. 

Burke told George III. that he could not arrest 
three millions of people for treason. Reconstruc- 
tion was a futile attempt to arrest four times that 
number of people, who were sovereign corporators 
of sovereign corporations called States. States 
are perpetual chartered corporations. Individual 
corporators die, States survive. 

What of the location of a seat of goverftrnent ? 

The States must cede the territory to the Con- 
gress, and thereafter that body shall '^ exercise 
exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever over 
such district, not exceeding ten miles square.'* 
(See Art. I., sec. 8.) Maryland and Virginia 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 73 

ceded the District of Columbia in 1790. In 
1800 the seat of government was removed 
from Philadelphia. The site was selected by 
Washington by authority from Congress. The 
territory south of the Potomac, containing Alex- 
andria, was afterwards retroceded to Virginia. As 
to removal, if States refuse to cede territory for a 
new district, the capital must remain where it is. 

Can the President transact official business outside 
of the District ? 

His official residence and office are confined to 
the District of Columbia, where Congress and the 
Supreme Court assemble. If he transacts the 
business of his agency on the soil of any State, he 
becomes an intruder. The State reserves its own 
territory for the discharge of the duties of officials 
under its own Constitution. In exceptionally 
necessitous cases the President might act offi- 
cially on such land as a State may have sold to 
the United States, or in a Territory over which 
Congress exercises jurisdiction. 

How are the United States to acquire sites for 
public buildings within States ? 

By purchase, with the consent of the legisla- 
tures of the several States. The State legislatures 
make reservations for the enforcement of the 



74 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

service of civil process and the arrest and punish- 
ment of persons charged with crime against their 
laws. Otherwise, Congress have exclusive au- 
thority over forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, 
and other needful buildings within the purchased 
territory. 

Who are electors ? 

They are elective State officers. In a body 
called usually the Electoral College they are the 
States in special council. The theory of the 
framers of the Constitution was that the electors 
should be intermediaries between the presidential 
candidates and the suffragants of the several 
States. The electors, acting as States, were to 
choose a President and Vice-President. This 
would, it was thought, avoid unseemly wrangling, 
demagogism, and consequent excitement which 
might end in bloodshed. It was clear at first 
that the appointment of electors, being an act 
of a sovereign State, would keep alive the idea of 
sovereignty. 

Immemorial usage has overridden the original 
design of the Constitution-makers. The present 
method was thought by Andrew Jackson to be a 
sham, yet it protects the smaller States. A more 
direct vote for President and Vice-President might 
appease vanity, but it has its evils, which arise in 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 75 

the temptation of State officials to nullify the 
will of the people thereof by dishonest count and 
certification. 

How are electors created? 

By each of the States. They are appointed. 

Have State legislatures absolute control as to the 
fnanner ? 

Their control is absolute. South Carolina con- 
stituted her legislature her electoral agent. The 
State legislatures can order that electors, who 
shall tally with the number of Representatives in 
Congress, shall be appointed by congressional 
districts, and that the States shall be divided into 
two districts for the appointment of electors-at- 
large, who tally in number Avith the two Senators. 
A writer thus summarizes the free action of 
Maryland : 

''In 1800 Maryland had eight Representatives 
in Congress, and, of course, was entitled to ten 
electors. The act of the legislature divided the 
State into ten districts, which could not be the 
same as the eight congressional districts, and 
provided that the voters of each of these districts 
should choose a presidential elector. In this case 
no elector was appointed by the State at large. 
From 1804 to 1828 Maryland was entitled to 



76 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

eleven electors, and by the act of 1802 the State 
was divided into nine districts, seven of them 
choosing one elector each, and two of them two 
electors each. Still more curious was the election 
of 1832, in which, by an act of the previous year, 
the State was divided into four districts, of which 
one — the Eastern Shore, together with Hartford 
County — was empowered to choose three electors; 
another — Baltimore City — two ; a third — Balti- 
more County — two; and the rest of the Western 
Shore, as the fourth, four — thus making up the 
eleven presidential electors to which the State 
was entitled.'* 

Investigations into the electoral practices at 
different periods of North Carolina, Massachu- 
setts, New York, Ohio, and Michigan, and other 
States, will show that each State is an absolute 
pov/er, and made so by these words of the 
Constitution (Art. II., sec. i): ^^ Each State 
shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature 
thereof may direct, a number of electors equal 
to the whole number of Senators and Repre- 
sentatives to which the State may be entitled in 
the Congress.'' 

Can a State repel invasion ? 

Yes ; if '* actually invaded, or in such imminent 
danger as will not admit of delay." (Art. L, sec. 10.) 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 77 

The United States cannot grant to a foreign 
power, as Mexico, for example, the privilege of 
entering Texas, or other State on the border, in 
time of peace, with armed and uniformed troops. 
The Governor of such State could regard such 
entry as invasion, and repel it. " The United 
States shall guarantee to every State in this Union 
a republican form of government, and shall pro- 
tect each of them against invasion ; and on ap- 
plication of the legislature, or of the executive 
(when the legislature cannot be convened), against 
domestic violence/' (Art. IV., sec. 4.) 

What is domestic violence ? 

Armed insurrection within a State against its 
government and its laws ; also, armed invasion of a 
State by a sister State. 

What authorizes a call for the interve^ttion of the 
United States ? 

When the civil power of a State is exhausted. 
The same rule applies to a State when the local 
military are powerless to execute the laws. In 
either event the Federal marshals and military 
are only used as subordinate aids to secure peace 
as an armed posse comitatus under State officials. 

Can United States troops otherzvise interfere ? 
The President may send troops to their reser- 



78 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

vations through or within the States, to protect 
forts, arsenals, custom-houses, post-offices, but 
not to protect private property or the prop- 
erty of corporations. The government of the 
United States cannot run railroads or steamboats 
engaged in ordinary traffic. The government 
may select post-roads, but, if railroad routes, it 
cannot constitutionally order United States troops 
to protect trains belonging to corporations, but 
must hold the corporations carrying the mails 
responsible for non-delivery during strikes originat- 
ing in quarrels between employees and employ- 
ers. To do otherwise is to attack the fundamen- 
tal principles of the society of sovereign States. 

What about troops to sustain "' inter-State com- 
merce / 

The government of the United States has 
nothing to do with private traffic. That is the 
business of the several States. It is the duty of 
the government of the United States to send for- 
ward the mails and troops to their reservations, and 
it is the duty of the States to see that the mails 
and troops go through the several States without 
hindrance or molestation. No act of Congress, no 
pretence whatever, can set aside the plain language 
of the Constitution as to the rights of Governors 
and legislatures in case of *^ domestic violence.'* 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 7g 

The government of the United States has con- 
tracted with owners of elevated, cable, and electric 
corporations in New York, and other cities, to 
affix to their cars postal departments, dominated 
by receiving, assorting, and distributing clerks, on 
their entire routes. In time this contract will 
give new employment to United States troops. 
The satrapy of the ancient days may find a paral- 
lel in our era. The history of the Roman Pre- 
torian Band and the Swiss Guards of the Bour- 
bons may be repeated here. Ours is virgin soil 
for usurpations. 

United States troops protecting the mail ser- 
vice is one thing, but protecting property of a 
chartered State corporation is quite another. 
Corporations, when they bring danger upon them- 
selves, and trouble and impecuniosity to their 
em^ployees, will not scruple to make every car a 
mail-car, and thus cause citizens to be shot for 
presumed interference with postal matters and 
also with inter-State commerce. 

Is the opinion of Justice Brewer Law ? 

In the Debs habeas corpus case a full bench of 
justices decided that he was in contempt of the 
Circuit Court, sitting at Chicago during the labor 
difficulties, in not obeying an injunction of Judge 
Wood, presiding, and therefore not entitled to the 



8o CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

benefit of the liberty-giving writ. Justice Brewer 
delivered for the court a decision so remarkable 
that it may be reversed in the future. It declares 
that the United States have the right to intervene 
without regard to the reserved powers of a State 
and of State laws, and to set aside all obstacles to 
the transportation of the mails and the conduct 
of inter-State commerce. 

The hundred arms of Briareus were as noth- 
ing to the tentacles of the general government. 
True, said Justice Brewer, the government is one 
of enumerated powers, but behind every enumer- 
ation is absolute sovereignty. It can reach the 
citizen anywhere, and in the exercise of that sov- 
ereignty the intermediate agency of the State 
must be disregarded. The '* national govern- 
ment can use its authority to call out the 
army and the militia in every quarter to sustain 
the Washington rulers/* The one conclusive an- 
swer to the Brewer opinion is : Delegated power is 
not sovereign power. 

The threat of an august tribunal to use force is 
not republican save when war darkens the land. 
*^ John Marshall has made his decision," said 
President Jackson ; " now let him execute it ! *' 
It requires the executive department to do that. 
The people of the States will always be slow 
to enforce an opinion which is unconstitutional. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. ' -Si 

And the opinion of Justice Brewer is not consti- 
tutional, and will not obtain. Hamilton himself 
would not advocate such centralization. It is of 
a piece with the reported centralizing language 
of a late Attorney-General when he filed in the 
Supreme Court his petition for a rehearing of the 
Income Tax decision : "' The United States re- 
spectfully represents,'' m'^t^d.d, of represent; ^^ the 
United States was expected to rely for its cus- 
tomary revenues upon duties, imposts, and ex- 
cises," instead of were ; and ** it [the United 
States] ought to refund,." etc. 

What of the fiitMre of United States troops ? 

When all the Territories are States, this arm 
of force, borrowed from Europe, should cease. 
There should always be a navy, but not a regular 
army. 

How often is ''the Union'' and "-this Union'' 
mentioned ? 

** The Union," twice. " This Union, " three 
times. The foregoing quoted words are defini- 
tions of the purpose of the framers of the Consti- 
tution. The States united or formed into '* this 
Union " of sovereigns shall guarantee to every 
sovereign member of '^ the Union" what? A 
'^republican form of government.". Mr. Randolph's 



82 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

** national government '' and Hamilton's monarchi- 
cal ideas were carefully avoided. 

How can the Constitution be amended ? 

Two-thirds of both houses of Congress can pro- 
pose amendments, or, on the application of the 
legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, 
Congress shall call a convention for proposing 
amendments. Such amendments must be ratified 
between three-fourths of the several States, or 
by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the 
one or the other mode of ratification may be 
proposed by Congress. States amend, not in- 
dividuals ; and for that reason Rhode Island, 
Delaware, and Nevada are equal to the more 
populous States of New York, Pennsylvania, 
and Ohio in the ratification or non-ratification of 
a proposed amendment. Men vote as corpora- 
tors ; States vote as sovereign and perpetually 
living corporations. States severally count the 
votes of men ; the United States count the votes 
of the several States. 

Why three-fourths of the States ? 

Because three-fourths are a working quorum of 
the United States. Ratification is an act of State 
legislation. It is the highest exercise of super- 
vising sovereignty. 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 83 

What can the small States do ? 

Rhode Island or Delaware can amend the Con- 
stitution of the United States as parts of the 
three-fourths, but the United States have no 
power to amend the Constitutions of these small 
States of the Union. The smallest State can 
vote to unseat a President, but the United States 
cannot unseat the Governor of the smallest of the 
States. The reason is that the States are prin- 
cipals. 

What of the Bill of Rights ? 

The first ten '* Amendments/' as they are called, 
constitute a Bill of Rights, and were passed by 
the new Congress begun and held at the city of 
New York on Wednesday, the fourth day of 
March, 1789. They were ratified between the 
constitutional number of States, 1791. 

The preamble to the joint resolution of Con- 
gress says: *' The conventions of a number of 
States having, at the tim.e of the adoption of the 
Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to pre- 
vent misconstruction and abuse of its powers, that 
further declaratory and restrictive clauses should 
be added, and as extending the ground of public 
confidence in the government will best insure the 
beneficent ends of its institution : Resolvedy' 
(here follows the joint resolution proposing the 



84 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

*' Amendments " to the legislatures of the several 
States). The articles so ratified have special 
application to the reserved or ungranted powers 
of the States. The Supreme Court of the United 
States have so decided. 

The Eleventh Amendment was proposed at 
the first session of the third Congress, and rati- 
fied between the States in 1798. The Twelfth 
Amendment was proposed at the eighth Con- 
gress, and ratified in 1804. 

What are declaratory^ and what are restrictive ? 

Article I. — ''Congress shall make no law re- 
specting an establishment of religion, or prohibit- 
ing the free exercise thereof.'' This, while restrict- 
ing Congress, is declaratory of the conclusion of 
Article VL, unamended Constitution, that " no 
religious test shall ever be required as a qualifica- 
tion to any office or public trust under the United 
States." 

Congress is also prohibited from " abridging the 
freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of 
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition 
the government for a redress of grievances." 

What of the Louisiana Lottery decision ? 

In the habeas corpus cases of George W. Dupre, 
of the Daily States of New Orleans, and John 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 85 

L. Rapier, of the Daily Register of Mobile, the 
Supreme Court of the United States gave to Con- 
gress unHmited control over the mail within the 
limits of the several States. The appellants were 
charged with sending lottery matter through the 
mail in violation of an act of Congress. The 
opinion of the court was based on a previous 
deliverance of that tribunal, known as Jackson, 
ex parte, a case where the prohibition of the mail- 
ing and transmission of lottery matter by the law 
was questioned. The prohibitive provisions were 
as to fraudulent lotteries, but the amended statute 
includes all lotteries. In the former case it was 
argued that to exclude from the mail newspapers 
containing printed matter relating to fraudulent 
lotteries was an abridgment of the constitutional 
right of the press, and this argument was used in 
the cases of Dupre and Rapier on the far more 
solid ground that the Louisiana Lottery was a 
chartered institution of a sovereign State, over 
whose local legislation Congress has no power to 
legislate. But the court decided that the amended 
act gives the United States authority to regulate 
transportation of letters and newspapers in each 
State, which carries with it punishment for viola- 
tion, and which must be conceded to be an enor- 
mous step toward centralization. 

The United States become usurpers when they 



86 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

infringe the freedom of speech and of the press. 
The lottery was a purely local institution. It was 
not opposed to *' the general welfare.'' The 
United States are not the custodians of the 
morals of the people of the States. The States 
are such custodians. The mail belongs to the 
States. The United States are their agent and 
mail-carrier. 

What about church and State ? 

Massachusetts gave us the first amendment. It 
is worthy of the young Liberty that was rocked 
in the cradle of old Faneuil Hall. Entire separa- 
tion of State and church is meant by it. The 
principals or the States reserved to themselves 
the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being, and so 
omitted it in the charter of the agent. 

Mark the words of prohibition : Congress shall 
make no law respecting what ? '' An establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof." The amendment does not say ** a relig- 
ion," but any religion, whether Aryan, Christian, 
Mohammedan, or Pagan. The United States must 
have nothing to do with the religious consciences 
of men. In no case must they prohibit the free 
exercise of that conscience. 

Our treaty with Tripoli explains itself. This 
treaty was concluded November 4, 1796, was rati- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 8/ 

fied by the Senate June 7, 1797, and proclaimed 
June 10, 1797. 

Article XL is as follows : 

*' As the government of the United States is 
not in any sense founded on the Christian relig- 
ion ; as it has in itself no character of enmity 
against the laws, religion, or tranquillity of Mus- 
sulmans ; and as the said States have never en- 
tered into any war or act of hostility against the 
Mohammedan nation, it is declared by the parties 
that no pretext arising from religious opinions 
shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony 
existing between the two countries." 

This treaty bears the signature of George Wash- 
ington and his Secretary of State, Timothy Pick- 
ering, and as this was only twenty-one years after 
the Declaration of Independence, with most of 
the great actors in the founding of the govern- 
ment still living, and with whom this treaty found 
no protest, it may be accepted, whether right or 
wrong, as an expression of what its founders re- 
garded as the character of the government of the 
United States. 

That which the States prohibited to the United 
States they meant to be applicable to themselves. 
A State is debarred from using its official author- 
ity to sustain the worship of any sect. All it can 
do is to protect all sects from molestation or vio- 



88 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

lence. The people of the State of New York, in 
the preamble to its Constitution, return grateful 
thanks to Almighty God for their freedom, and 
simply declare that '' the free exercise and enjoy- 
ment of religious profession and worship, without 
discrimination or preference, shall forever be al- 
lowed in the State to all mankind." 

Free religion, free speech, free press, free schools, 
and free assemblages make a free people. 

Article II. — '* A well-regulated militia being 
necessary to the security of a free State, the right 
of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be 
infringed/' This is both declaratory and restric- 
tive, and really amends section 8, Article I., un- 
amended Constitution, which provides for the or- 
ganizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and 
for the governing such part of them as may be 
employed in the service of the United States, 
and which reserves to the States respectively the 
appointment of the officers and the authority of 
training the militia according to the discipline 
prescribed by Congress. The amendment re- 
strains Congress from disarming the militia, as 
well as the people of the several States. The 
people would not have a great standing army for 
the use of a Cromwell or a Caesar. A small body 
of regular troops for frontier and special use were 
enough for the general agent of the States. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 89 

Articles III. and IV. prohibit interference with 
the property rights and personal rights of indi- 
viduals, by quartering soldiers in time of peace in 
any house without the consent of the owner, or 
in time of war unlawfully, and also protects the 
people from unreasonable searches and seizures. 
It is proper to say that soldiers of the United 
States should not be quartered on the soil of any 
State without the express consent of the legisla- 
ture of such State in time of peace. Such sol- 
diers may pass through a State to the reserva- 
tions of the United States at all times. 

Articles V. and VI. declare the sanctity of 
indictment by grand jury, and the right to a 
speedy and public trial in all criminal prosecu- 
tions by an impartial jury of the State and district 
wherein the crime shall have been committed, the 
accused person to be informed of the nature and 
cause of the accusation, to be confronted with 
witnesses against him, to have compulsory process 
for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have 
the assistance of counsel for his defence. The 
word '' district '' is an amendment to section 
3, Article III., original or unamended Constitu- 
tion. An accused person could be indicted and 
tried anywhere in a State until this amendment 
was ratified, A fruitless effort was made by a 
citizen of the District of Columbia to extradite 



90 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

a prominent New York editor for criminal libel. 
The ground assumed before a Federal tribunal 
was that a newspaper is published in any State, 
city, or district in which it circulates. 

In Article V. it is provided that no person 
*' shall be compelled in any criminal case to be 
a witness against himself." It had been largely 
held that this exemption applied to accused per- 
sons, but the Supreme Court of the United States, 
in January, 1892, decided that it also applied to 
witnesses. In a case before the United States 
Circuit Court, Judge Gresham presiding, Charles 
^Counselman, a witness, refused to answer whether 
he had received special railroad freight rates in 
violation of the Inter-State Commerce law\ 
Judge Gresham held the refusal as contempt, and 
the Supreme Court overruled his decision. 

Article VII., which is both declaratory and 
restrictive, ordains that '' in suits at common law, 
where the value in controversy shall exceed 
twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be 
preserved ; and no fact tried by a jury shall be other- 
wise reexamined in any court of the United States 
than according to the rules of the common law." 

Article VIII. prohibits excessive bail and fines 
and cruel and unusual punishment, whether by 
the governments of the several States or the 
United States. 



OF THE UNITED STATES, QI 

Article IX. declares that '' The enumeration 
in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be 
construed to deny or disparage others retained 
by the people." And Article X. declares that 
**The powers not delegated to the United States 
by this Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved to the States respectively 
or to the people/' Delegated powers, which are 
never permanent, are necessarily enumerated; un- 
delegated or reserved powers are permanent, and 
need no enumeration. Enumerated powers are 
to be strictly construed. Ungranted powers are 
the residuary mass of natural, legal, and political 
rights. 

Article XI. is purely judicial. It abrogates the 
original amenability of sovereign States to private 
suit. Article III., section 2, of the unamended 
Constitution says: ^' The judicial power shall 
extend to all cases of law and equity . . . 
between a State and citizens of another State, 
. . . or between a State or the citizens thereof, 
and foreign States, citizens, and subjects." The 
amendment of 1798, which is restrictive and 
mandatory, declares that '' The judicial power of 
the United States shall not be construed to ex- 
tend to any suit in law or equity commenced or 
prosecuted against one of the United States by 
citizens of another State, or by citizens or sub- 



92 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

jects of any foreign state." "' The inhibition/' 
says Kent, *^ applies only to citizens or subjects, 
and does not extend to suits by a State, or for- 
eign states or powers." Note the decentraliza- 
tion : '' 07te of the United States." 

Are there examples of State exemption ? 

Yes. In Chisholm vs. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, the 
Supreme Court of the United States rendered 
judgment against the State. Such was the public 
alarm that the Supreme Court, in HoUingsworth 
vs. Virginia, 3 Dall. 378, decided that the amend- 
ment related back so as to dismiss every suit 
which had been instituted against a State. In 
the Iowa original package decision of the same 
tribunal, in 1891, the court delivered a centralized 
opinion, but public pressure forced Congress to 
pass an act which enabled the court to give a 
decentralized opinion by deciding said act to be 
constitutional. But it is a poor subterfuge and a 
bad precedent to preserve the reserved powers 
of Iowa and the other States by congressional 
legislation. 

By the Virginia Act of May 12, 1887, passed at 
the special session, the Commonwealth's attorney 
in each county, city, or town where the proceed- 
ing is, as well as the attorney-general in the cases 
therein described, is directed, upon complaint, of 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 93 

the treasurer of the county, and the auditor, to 
sue for the recovery of taxes due by a tax-payer 
who has tendered interest coupons which have 
been detached from the bonds of the State of 
Virginia. The object of the enactment is to 
compel the holders of such coupons to prove 
their genuineness in court before their acceptance 
in payment of dues to the State, there being of 
coupons detached from the bonds of Virginia, 
according to the statement of the complainants' 
bill, more than four millions of dollars, in value, 
in the hands of the public at large, but held chiefly 
in London. 

In case of disobedience to the commands of the 
statute by any of the officers, a fine is provided. 
On the sixth day of the ensuing June an order was 
made in the Circuit Court of the United States 
for the eastern district of Virginia, in the case of 
Cooper against Marye and others, restraining the 
parties defendant from executing the said statute 
of May 1 2th. But, in despite of the said restrain- 
ing order, Attorney-General R. A. Ayres, attorney 
for the commonwealth in the county of Fauquier, 
John Scott, and the attorney for the common- 
wealth in Loudoun County, J. B. McCabe, pro- 
ceeded to institute the prohibited suits. Each of 
these officers, upon a rule to show cause, was ar- 
raigned before United States Circuit Judge Bond, 



94 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

and adjudged guilty of a contempt of court. • Each 
was condemned to pay a fine and the costs, to 
dismiss the suits, and be confined in the city jail 
of Richmond until the judgment was complied 
with. The defendants each obtained a writ of 
habeas corpus from the Supreme Court. 

At the October term, 1887, Justice Stanley 
Matthews rendered a decision reversing the court 
below, the concluding part of which is as follows: 

"The principal contention on the part of the 
petitioners is that the suit nominally against them 
is, in fact and law, a suit against the State of Vir- 
ginia, whose officers they are, jurisdiction to enter- 
tain which is denied by the Eleventh Amendment 
to the Constitution. We adjudge the suit of 
Cooper and others against Marye and others, in 
which the injunctions were granted against the 
present petitioners, to be in substance and law a 
suit against the State of Virginia. It is therefore 
within the prohibition of the Eleventh Amend- 
ment to the Constitution. By the terms of that 
provision it is a case to which the judicial power 
of the United States does not extend. The Cir- 
cuit Court was without jurisdiction to entertain it. 
All the proceedings in the exercise of the jurisdic- 
tion it assumed are null and void. The orders 
forbidding the petitioners to bring the suits, for 
the bringing of which .they were adjudged to be 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 95 

in contempt of its authority, it had no power to 
make. The orders judging them in contempt 
were equally void, and their imprisonment is 
without the authority of law. It is therefore 
ordered that the petitioners be discharged." * In 
re Ayres, in re Scott, in re McCabe, 123 United 
States Reports, 443. 

The victory over usurpation was conclusive. 

Mr. Justice Matthews, for the court, gave the 
following rule of interpretation of the Eleventh 
Amendment : 

*^ To secure the manifest purpose of the consti- 
tutional exemption guaranteed by the Eleventh 
Amendment requires that it should be interpreted 
not literally and too narrowly, but fairly and with 
such breadth and largeness as effectually to accom- 
plish the substance of its purpose. In this spirit 
it must be held to cover not only suits against a 
State by name, but those also against its officers, 
agents, and representatives, where the State, 
though not named as such, is nevertheless the 
only real party against which alone, in fact, the re- 
lief is asked, and against which the judgment or 
decree effectively operates." 

Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the court, 
in Osborn vs. the Bank of the United States, 9 
Wheaton, 783, held that, however interested a 
State might be in the judgment, it was not to be 



96 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

considered as sued unless named in the record. 
The decision and interpretation of Justice Matth- 
ews, in the name of the court, departs from the 
opinion of Marshall. In the same case it was also 
held that as the State of Ohio itself, which threat- 
ened the franchises of the bank, could not be made 
a party defendant, the suit might be maintained 
against the officers and agents of the State who 
were intrusted with the execution of the laws 
thereof. The opinion of Justice Matthews was a 
decided victory over the centralizing opinion of 
the court dominated by the great Chief Justice. 

Is the Supreine Court infallible ? 

By no means ; although the habit of reaffirming 
old opinions would appear so. If the States ad- 
journed the court sine die by an amendment to the 
Constitution, they would only recommit to them- 
selves respectively delegated judicial powers. If 
the court shall ever attempt to consolidate the 
States, it is here predicted that this will be a 
remedy. There are two ways of punishing jus- 
tices of the Supreme Court : by Congress cutting 
down the number of justices as they die, or abol- 
ishing the court by the States. 

What of the income tax ? 

A direct tax is a tax levied on land and houses. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 9/ 

The Supreme Court of the United States (1895) 
decided that the income derived from such a 
source was a direct tax, and the money collected 
by revenue ofificers under a law of Congress passed 
and promulgated, was, in consequence, refunded 
by the Secretary of the Treasury. 

The nullification of the act produced great ex- 
citement. It was denounced as plutocratic. But 
a majority of the court had decided on a rehear- 
ing at the instance of the Attorney-General, and 
public opinion, that Congress had no right to di- 
rectly tax a class of citizens who were opulent, or 
owners of bond securities, or with fixed limited 
income. Taxation must be uniform. To be uni- 
form it must be apportioned among the people of 
the States. A dissenting justice, Harlan, pre- 
dicted great evils would flow from an opinion 
which demolished the power of the United States 
to levy a direct tax. It had served the country in 
the war between the States, and there might be 
good reason to impose such a tax again. The 
Chief Justice and a majority of the court thought 
there were other and fairer sources of revenue 
than direct Federal taxation. 

Patrick Henry and William Grayson (the latter 

a senatorial colleague of Richard Henry Lee in 

the first Congress) opposed the ratification of the 

Constitution in the Virginia Convention, and one 

7 



98 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

of the grounds was that the instrument took from 
the several States the sole right of direct taxation, 
which was the highest act of sovereignty. 

What would Henry and Grayson now think of 
a decision of the Supreme Court which relegates 
to the several States this " highest act of sover- 
eignty '' more than a century after their eloquent 
opposition ? 

The truth is the general government is weak- 
ened in proportion to the number of States, be- 
cause the enumerated powers are small compared 
with the reserved powers of the several States ; 
and, further, the distribution of powers is the dif- 
fusion of powers, and diffusion is not a tonic, but 
a relaxant, in politics as in medicine. 

Men love and protect weakness, not inherent 
strength. So long as the United States are the 
agent of the States and the people they will en- 
dure by common consent. When they become 
despotic they will share the fate of all tyrants. 

Elsewhere it is shown how the war amendments 
destroyed the enumeration which was intended to 
preserve representation by equal apportionment 
of taxation. The Fourteenth Amendment is fatal 
to direct taxation as set forth in Article I. 

Article XII. readjusts the duties of electors, 
and so amends Article II., section 3, of the un- 
amended Constitution as to prevent a repetition 



OF THE UNITED STATES. ' 99 

of the Jefferson-Burr contention, and prescribes 
that the Vice-President must have the same con- 
stitutional eligibility as the President. This im- 
portant addition was omitted by the framers. 

The amended article did not prevent the forma- 
tion of an electoral commission outside of it, and 
which disfranchised Louisiana and Florida, and 
** counted in '' Rutherford B. Hayes as President. 

Where is '' slavery *' first mentioned? 

For the first time the word slavery occurs in 
the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. 
The future historian who reads the orations and 
debates on '' slavery '' in and out of Congress will 
be amazed to find the words "^ held to service or 
labor '' the passionless language of Article IV., sec- 
tion 3, of the Constitution signed by Washington, 
These are the words of the framers : '' No person 
held to service or labor in one State under the 
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in con- 
sequence of any law or regulation therein, be dis- 
charged from such service or labor, but shall be 
delivered up on claim of the party to whom such 
service or labor may be due/' 

If the exact words of the Constitution had 
been used, instead of being suppressed by public 
speakers, a million and more of valuable lives and 
billions of treasure might have been spared by 



lOO CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

gradual and peaceful emancipation. A word not 
in the Constitution fired the blood and exploded 
the shell. That word was '* slavery." 

What is the brief history of persons held to ser- 
vice or labor ? 

In the convention, antagonisnns arose between 
the Northern States, which were commercial and 
manufacturing, and the Southern States, which 
were agricultural. The question arose, touching 
representation in the House of Representatives 
and taxation, Shall persons bound to service be 
counted ? Again, Shall the trade in Africans on 
the western coast of Africa be continued ? 

Was a compromise effected? 

Yes. Article L, section 3, says : [^' Represen- 
tatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned 
among the several States which may be included 
within this Union, according to their respective 
numbers, which shall be determined by adding 
to the whole number of free persons, including 
those bound to service for a term of years, and 
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all 
other persons."] This apportionment gave the 
Northern States a majority of five in the first 
House of Representatives. The second section 
of the Fourteenth Amendment repealed it by 



OF THE UNITED STATES. lOI 

ordering a representative apportionment to include 
the '' whole number of persons in each State, 
excluding Indians not taxed." As there can 
now be no enumeration, there can be no consti- 
tutional levy of a direct tax. The Fifteenth 
Amendment was intended to repeal more fully 
the words in brackets. 

What of the ijnportation of Africans ? 

Virginia and the Middle States opposed further 
importation ; New England and three Southern 
States united to continue it until 1808, twenty 
years thereafter. These Southern States wanted 
more sable laborers ; New England ships were 
engaged in bringing them at a great profit. 

The Southern States were threatened with tax- 
ation of exports, which would ruin them as agri- 
cultural commonwealths. Compromise : Exports 
would not be taxed if commerce was to be regu- 
lated by a majority vote, and the importation of 
Africans was guaranteed. The coveted exchange 
was given in these words in section 9 of Article 
I. : '' No tax or duty shall be laid on articles 
exported from any State." The other concession 
was made in these explicit v/ords, also in section 
9 of the same article : ^' The migration or impor- 
tation of such persons as any of the States now 
existing shall think proper to admit shall not 



I02 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 
one thousand eight hundred and eight ; but a tax 
or duty may be imposed on such importation, not 
exceeding ten dollars for each person/' In Art- 
icle v., relating to amendments, the foregoing con- 
cession is expressly excepted from amendment. 

^^ Slave trade " is not used by the framers. 
They carefully avoided the ethnological name 
'* negro." Had the convention at once put an 
end to the further importation of negroes, the 
clause ordering the rendition of " persons held to 
service or labor" would not have been adopted 
as a part of the compromise, and no Dred Scott 
and other similar excitements opened the way to 
disastrous war. 

It is a noteworthy fact that in the beginning of 
the present century New England had two hun- 
dred and two vessels engaged in the slave trade, 
fifty-nine of which belonged to Rhode Island. 
One of the grandee slavers was Colonel Malbone 
of Newport; Captain John Hoar of Massachu- 
setts was also conspicuous as a successful slaver. 

What would be an act of justice to the negroes? 

The United States, having by constitutional 
authority authorized the continuance of the slave 
trade for twenty years, should furnish transporta- 
tion to Liberia, the Congo Free State, or other 



OF THE UNITED STATES, IO3 

western portions of Africa, to all descendants of 
African slaves who may wish to go thither. Jef- 
ferson, in 1 82 1, advocated gradual emancipation 
and deportation. 

What did Jefferson say ? 

Speaking of gradual emancipation and deporta- 
tion, Mr. Jefferson was prophetic. The public 
mind was not ripe for it ; and he says, with far- 
reaching thought : '* Yet the day is not distant 
when it must bear and adopt it, or v>^orse will fol- 
low. Nothing is more certainly written in the 
book of Fate than that these people are to be 
free ; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally 
free, cannot live together in the same govern- 
ment. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indel- 
ible lines of distinction between them." 

He insisted that slow and peaceable emancipa- 
tion and deportation would lead to the filling up 
of the country by free white laborers. 

What did Abraham Lincoln say ? 

In June, 1862, a delegation of negroes waited 
on President Lincoln at the White House. He 
made to them the following remarkable speech : 

** Why should not the people of your race be 
colonized ? Why should they not leave this coun- 
try ? This is, perhaps, the first question for con- 



I04 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

sideration. You and we are a different race. 
We have between us a broader difference than 
exists between almost any other two races. 
Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss ; 
but this physical difference is a great disadvantage 
to us both, as I think your race suffers greatly, 
many of them by living with us, while ours suffer 
from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each 
side. 

'-'' If this is admitted, it shows a reason why we 
should be separated. You, here, are freemen, I 
suppose. Perhaps you have long been free, or all 
your lives. Your race are suffering, in my opin- 
ion, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. 
But even when you cease to be slaves, you are 
yet far removed from being placed on an equality 
with the white race. You are still cut off from 
many of the advantages which are enjoyed by the 
other race. The aspiration of man is to enjoy 
equality with the best when free ; but on this 
broad continent not a single man of your race is 
made the equal of ours. 

"' Go where you are treated the best, and the ban 
is still upon you. I do not propose to discuss 
this, but to present it as a fact with which we 
have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would. It is 
a fact about which we all think and feel alike. 
We look to our conditions owing to the existence 



OF THE UNITED STATES. I05 

of the races on this continent. I need not recount 
to you the effects upon white men growing out of 
the institution of .slavery. I believe in its general 
evil effects upon the white race. See our present 
condition. The country is engaged in war. Our 
white men are cutting each other's throats, none 
knowing how far their frenzy may extend ; and 
then consider what we know to be the truth. But 
for your race among us there could not be a war, 
although many men engaged on either side do not 
care for you one way or the other. 

*' Nevertheless, I repeat, without the institution 
of slavery and the colored race as a basis, the war 
could not have had an existence. It is better for 
us both, therefore, to be separated. I know that 
there are free men among you who, even if they 
could better their condition, are not as much in- 
clined to go out of the country as those who, 
being slaves, could obtain their freedom on this 
condition. I suppose one of the principal diffi- 
culties in the way of colonization is that the free 
colored man cannot see that his comfort would 
be advanced by it. You may believe you can live 
in Washington, or elsewhere in the United States, 
the remainder of your lives, perhaps more com- 
fortably than you could in any foreign country. 
Hence you may come to the conclusion that you 
have nothing to do with the idea of going to a 



Io6 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

foreign country. This (I speak in no unkind 
sense) is an extremely selfish view of the case. 
But you ought to do something to help those who 
are not so fortunate as yourselves. . . . For the 
sake of your race you should sacrifice something 
of your present comfort, for the purpose of being 
as grand in that respect as the white people.'* 

Instead of assisting ex-slaves to sail for Africa, 
and thus deplete the growing population, the poli- 
ticians invented the Fourteenth and Fifteenth 
Amendments, which breed discord instead of har- 
mony. To this moment these people are the prey 
of the knaves of both political parties. 

Are there ambiguities and inelegances in the Con- 
stitution ? 

Yes. Generally the Constitution is a model of 
pure Saxon English. The following, no doubt, 
have their origin in '' selection," which is illus- 
trated in the beginning of this volume. For ex- 
ample. Article I. , section 2 : *^ The House of Repre- 
sentatives shall choose their Speaker and other 
officers.'' Section 3 : '^ The Vice-President of the 
United States shall be president of the Senate, 
but shall have no vote unless they be equally 
divided."" ^' The Senate shall choose tlieir other 
officers." ^'The Senate shall have the sole power 
to try all impeachments. When sitting for that 



OF THE UNITED STATES. ' lO/ 

purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation." 
Section 5 : '' Each House shall be the judge of the 
elections, returns and qualifications of its own 
members." ^^ Each House may determine the 
rule of its proceedings, punish its members," etc. 
" Each House shall keep a journal of its proceed- 
ings, and from time to time publish the same, 
excepting such parts as may, in their judgment, 
require secrecy." Article I., section 7, authorizes 
the President to return a bill passed by the Senate 
and House of Representatives, '' with his objec- 
tions, to that House in which it originated ; who 
shall enter the objections at large on their jour- 
nal." 

We have in the foregoing a precedent for the 
pluralization of the House and Senate, and, by im- 
plication, the Supreme Court. 

How was the Constitution ratified ? 

Thirty-nine delegates of the whole number 
(fifty-nine) signed it. The names of George 
Wythe, Edmund Randolph, Luther Martin, Oliver 
Ellsworth, and other distinguished deputies of the 
twenty discontents are not on the roll. Ran- 
dolph, Grayson, and George Mason, all of Vir- 
ginia, were present, but did not sign. Article 
Vn. provided that : '' The ratification of the con- 
ventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the 



I08 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

establishment of this Constitution between the 
States so ratifying the same/' 

Why '' between " ? 

Because each State was sovereign, and treaties 
must be made between sovereigns. States, not 
men, framed the Constitution. '' Done in con- 
vention wuth the unanimous consent of the States 
present," are the final emphatic words of the 
original instrument. Remember States, not men, 
were ^' present " as contracting parties. 

Were other plaits proposed ? 

Yes. Gouverneur Morris moved to refer the 
proposed Constitution to a general convention 
chosen by the people. It did not have a second. 
Hamilton moved to submit the instrument to 
Congress, and, if that body agreed to it, then it 
was to be laid before the States in convention. 
Rejected. It was then agreed that Congress 
should send it to the legislatures of the several 
States, to be bv them submitted to a convention 
in each State for ratification, the delegates 
whereof should be chosen by the people thereof. 
Pennsylvania was first to call a convention for 
ratification, but second to ratify. Delaware was 
the first to ratify, December 7, 1787, and with- 
out proposing an amendment. '^ We, the people 



OF THE UNITED STATES. IO9 

of Delaware State," began the ratification. Mas- 
sachusetts declared it to be a new Constitution, a 
solemn compact between the States. New 
Hampshire, the ninth State, ratified June 21, 
1788. But eleven States, March 4, 1789, when 
the new Congress convened, had ratified. 

Where were the twelfth and thirteenth States ? 

Out among the independent countries of the 
world. Rhode Island was never represented in 
the convention. North Carolina w^as represented, 
but declined to ratify, and did not do so for more 
than eight months. Rhode Island ratified May 
29, 1790. 

What did Massachusetts do ? 

John Hancock and James Madison determined 
the fate of the Constitution in Massachusetts. 
Madison wrote to Washington : "- We must take 
off some of the opposition by amendments. I do 
not mean such as are to be made conditions of 
ratification, but recommendations only. Upon 
this plan we may probably get a majority of 
tvv^elve or fifteen, if not more." This device 
succeeded. Hancock presented amendments, and 
his adherents voted for the Constitution with 
this explanation of that gentleman: *' I give my 
assent to the Constitution in full confidence that 



no CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

the amendments proposed will be a part of the 
system/' 

It is a curious fact that eighteen members of 
the Massachusetts convention, Hancock among 
them, had been engaged in Shays's Rebellion 
for the cancellation of debts. Rufus King and 
Samuel Adams contributed to securing a majority 
of nineteen of three hundred and thirty-three 
members. 

What did New Hampshire do ? 

When the convention convened, the opponents 
to the Constitution were in the majority. The 
voters of the State were opposed to an act of rati- 
fication. An adjournment was carried, and, on 
reconvening, the delegates ratified the Constitu- 
tion. They disobeyed the will of their constit- 
uents, being convinced, as were some other 
statesmen, by *^the rhetoric of the Federalists'* ! 

What was the course of Virginia ? 

Virginia, named for the virgin daughter of the 
Tudors, was first settled by charter, May, 1607, 
at Jamestown. In the dedication of Spencer's 
^* Faerie Queene," Elizabeth is called '' Queen of 
England, France, Ireland, and Virginia." Tucker 
says that ** the first foetal Commonwealth was the 
Old Dominion." In 1623-24 Virginia declared 



OF THE UNITED STATES. Ill 

that no tax could be laid on the Colony but by- 
consent of the House of Burgesses. In 1645-46 
this prophecy of the Revolution was repeated. 
In 1651-52 the Commonwealth of England made a 
treaty with Virginia, conceding the same freedom 
to her people as was enjoyed by the people of 
England ; that no taxation nor forts nor garri- 
sons should be imposed on her without the con- 
sent of her Assembly, and that body should 
transact her local affairs. During the Common- 
wealth, Virginia elected her governors. 

Is it not consistent that Virginia now insisted on 
a Bill of Rights ? 

Jefferson, on his return from France, was 
amazed that personal and property and other 
essential rights were unprovided for in the Con- 
stitution. 

In the Assembly of Virginia, November 14, 
1788, an address was issued, asking Congress to 
call "' a convention of deputies from the several 
States, with full power to take into consideration 
the defects of the Constitution that have been 
suggested by the State conventions,'' and to 
'' report such amendments thereto as they shall 
find suited to the common interests, and to secure 
to ourselves and the latest posterity the great 
and inalienable rights of mankind.'' A second 



112 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

convention was not called, but amendments were 
passed by joint resolution in Congress, and sub- 
mitted to the legislatures of the States for rati- 
fication. Had the amendments not become a 
part of the Constitution, revolution would have 
followed. 

The State of Virginia had led, in the colonial 
era, in the war for '' redress of grievances " within 
the British Union, and afterwards in the war for 
independence. She was called the *' mother of 
States and of statesmen " in the after-time, because 
she had given to the Union Kentucky, Ohio, 
Illinois, and Indiana, and a galaxy of Presidents, 
jurists, and politicians of great lustre. It was a 
proud and deserved title, and she has, as a 
sovereign lady should, worn her honors with dis- 
tinguished dignity. Virginia should be painted 
as the mother of the Gracchi, always pointing 
to her children as her jewels, was the sentiment 
of Calhoun, and the artist idea of the civilized 
world. 

Can you name S07ne of the men of the Virginia 
conventidn of 1788 ? 

Yes. James Madison, who had been con- 
spicuous in shaping the Constitution ; John 
Marshall, James Monroe, George Mason, *'the 
lord of Gunston Hall," a man of transcendent 



OF THE UNITED STATES. II3 

talents, and an active participator in the forma- 
tion of the first Constitution of Virginia in 1776, 
and a deputy to the ^^ Federal convention '' at 
Philadelphia; Wilson Carey Nicholas, afterwards 
Governor of Virginia; Governor Edmund Ran- 
dolph; Edmund Pendleton, an eminent jurist, and 
President of the Court of Appeals ; Henry Lee, 
the *' Light-horse Harry '' of the Revolution, and 
subsequently Governor of the State and historian 
of the Southern war ; Bushrod Washington, a 
nephew of George Washington ; George Wythe, 
also a deputy to the Philadelphia convention, 
and Chancellor of the State, called by Jefferson 
the '' Cato of his country, but without the avarice 
of the Roman;*' James Innis, an eloquent law- 
yer, and Attorney-General of the State ; Patrick 
Henry, the great orator, whose eloquence, beauti- 
fully says John Scott of Fauquier, came to him 
'' as the song to the nightingale ; '' Benjamin Har- 
rison, the father of President William Henry 
Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, and Governor of the State in 1781 ; Will- 
iam Grayson, a colonel in the army, Representative 
and Senator in Congress ; Theodorick Bland, an 
active officer of the Revolution, and a member of 
the family of Washington ; George Grayson, a 
deputy to the Philadelphia convention, a lawyer 
and statesman of ability. 
8 



114 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

James Madison, often claimed to be the *' father 
of the Constitution/* was a young man of some 
thirty-seven years, ample browed, small, alert, 
patient, and preeminently logical. He made 
short speeches, pressed to the point in debate at 
once, and met with skill and precision the elo- 
quent onslaughts and persistent objections of 
Henry, the leader of the opposition to ratifi- 
cation. The matchless orator was not equal to 
the strategist of Montpelier, whose reserve could 
not be easily disturbed, and which always gave 
him advantage. 

Madison has been called a dissembler, but the 
fact seems to be that he feared the thirteen States 
would disintegrate and drift back to Great Britain 
unless the Constitution was ratified. Hamilton 
had the same fear. He accepted the Constitution 
only as a compromise. 

In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 
1798, in opposition to the Alien and Sedition Act 
of the Adams administration, -Madison flung out 
the flag of State sovereignty. The reserved gen- 
tleman, who afterwards seemed to grow smaller 
under the nodding plumes of Queen Dolly of the 
White House, was a statesman of large dimensions 
when he was called to a battle of political ethics. 
It was strange that in the Virginia convention 
one of the authors of the '' Federalist '* should be 



OF THE UNITED STATES. II5 

found side by side with benign John Marshall, 
whose tall form was to occupy the chair of Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, while Madison was to execute the laws 
which the great jurist should hold to be constitu- 
tional, and both live to be octogenarians. It was 
a' strange coincidence, too, that both these men 
should have been afflicted with incurable internal 
disorders — Judge Marshall in his last days, and 
Madison for more than sixty years — thus illustrat- 
ing how the soul dominates the body, and how 
great public duties can be performed with cheer- 
fulness even in the spasms of pain. It is equally 
strange that James Monroe and Bushrod Wash- 
ington should meet in the same convention, the 
first destined to the Presidency in an '^era of good 
feeling,*' and the second to interpret the new Con- 
stitution as an Associate Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. 

It is a romance of coincidences, perhaps links in 
an unbroken chain of events. 

So great was the apprehension that too much 
power had been conceded to the United States, 
that the Constitution was only ratified by ten 
votes in a convention of one hundred and sixty- 
eight members. But, as we shall see, it deter- 
mined the fate of the instrument in the New 
York convention. 



Il6 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Before ratification, Virginia passed the following 
reservation : ''' We, the delegates of the people of 
Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of the recom- 
mendation of the General Assembly, and now met 
in convention, having fully and freely investigated 
and discussed the proceedings of the Federal con- 
vention, and being prepared as well as the most 
mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide 
thereon, do, in the name and behalf of the people 
of Virginia, declare and make known that the pow- 
ers granted under the Constitution, being delivered 
from the people of the United States, may be re- 
sumed by them whenever the same shall be per- 
verted to their injury or oppression, and that 
every power not granted, thereby remained with 
them and at their will." 

What of Randolph! s defection ? 

The change in the tactics of Governor Randolph 
assisted ratification. His biographer, Moncure 
Daniel Conway, calls him a ^* recusant." The 
angry opponents of the Constitution saw the Gov- 
ernor in a worse light John Scott, in his able 
and searching work, "The Republic as a Form of 
Government ; or, the Evolution of Democracy," 
regards Randolph, more than Madison, as the 
'' father of the Constitution," because much of his 
plan was retained in one form or another. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. II/ 

Mr. Conway deplores that the convention did 
not adopt Randolph's '' efforts to make the rela- 
tive State and Federal powers definite and unmis- 
takable. The clause he would have added in ink 
has been written in blood/' That is to say, the 
late war consolidated the republic, which is a 
mistake. It produced no change in structure. 
Governor Randolph's Henrico constituents had 
voted for him with the understanding that he 
was to oppose ratification until the States should 
amend the Constitution. He accepted, but disre- 
garded their wishes. 

The supplicatory appeal of this eloquent and 
able Virginian, just as the convention of ratifica- 
tion was about to adjourn, is pathetic in its mild 
defiance. He said : '^ The suffrage which I will 
give in favor of the Constitution will be ascribed 
by malice to motives unknown to my breast. 
But, although for every other act of my life I 
shall seek refuge in the mercy of God, for this 
I request His justice only." 

Mr. Randolph saw his ** national government " 
disappear before the logic of Ellsworth and the 
threat of Brearly of New Jersey and the frowns 
of the people. '' In the convention," v/rote Luther 
Martin in his report to Maryland, "" there was a 
distinct monarchical party." They could not help 
Randolph. He did not approve of the changes 



Il8 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

in his strong government plan, yet would have 
appended his name to the Constitution had an- 
other general convention been declared essential 
to ratification. It was finally thought by Madison, 
and concurred in by Randolph, that a second con- 
vention would discredit the first one, and Virginia 
was urged to ratify, leaving amendments to be 
regarded as conditions subsequent, but treated as 
conditions precedent. In other words, to use the 
language of a resolution of the Virginia Assembly 
while considering the long series of amendments 
proposed to Congress to be laid before the States, 
'^ In the moment of their adoption " they should 
be looked upon as ** coeval with the ratification of 
the new plan of government/* 

Have they been so considered? 

Yes. The Eleventh Amendment was held in the 
case of Hollingsworth vs. Virginia, before men- 
tioned, to be a part of the Constitution before 
formal ratification and really contemporaneous 
with the instrument. Governor Hancock of Mas- 
sachusetts had before agreed with Hamilton in 
the *' Federahst," '' that a State could not be 
sued." Yet his State was sued, the Governor 
paying no attention to the process served on him. 
The Supreme Court of the United States not long 
after decided that such suits would lie. That 



OF THE UNITED STATES. II9 

procured the exemption of the several States from 
suits which detracted from their sovereignty. 
Governor Hancock's agency in this reform entitles 
him to the gratitude of all the States. 

What occurred in the Nezv York convention ? 

This convention met at Poughkeepsie in the 
summer of 1788, and continued in session for six 
weeks. It was composed of sixty-five members. 
Among them were Alexander Hamilton, John 
Jay, who was less than five feet in height, aquiline 
nose, with the student stoop, and blue-eyed, sub- 
sequently first Chief Justice of the United States, 
but then Secretary for Foreign Affairs ; Chancellor 
Livingston, called by Franklin the American 
Cicero, and a type of the colonial patrician, who 
afterwards delivered the oath of office to Presi- 
dent Washington on the balcony of Federal Hall, 
in Wall Street, while Hamilton, the coming first 
Secretary of the Treasury, looked on from his 
office opposite ; and Mayor Duane, of New York 
city. These were the chief champions of the rati- 
fication of the Constitution. The principal oppo- 
nents were Governor George Clinton, president of 
the body ; Robert Yates, Chief Justice of the 
State ; John Lansing, who had withdrawn from 
the Philadelphia convention with Robert Yates, 
and was afterwards Chancellor ; Recorder Jones, 



120 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

of New York city ; John Williams, Gilbert Liv- 
ingston, and Melancthon Smith, the latter called 
by James Kent, a daily spectator, ^' a man of 
metaphysical mind and embarrassing subtleties/* 
Of all the members of the convention the master 
of the Grange most feared Smith. The debates 
were of a high intellectual character, Hamilton 
and Smith leading in opposition to the opinions 
of each other. 

The convention was in no humor to accept the 
Constitution without amendments. Governor 
Clinton was hostile to it even with amendments. 
It had been adopted under lock and key, and he 
and others regarded it as giving too much power 
to the agent of the principals. It suited most of 
the men who framed it, but was not the expression 
of the people. 

During the last three weeks of the session, news 
arrived that New Hampshire had ratified the 
Constitution. That being the ninth State, the 
old Confederation was ipso facto dissolved, or 
would be when the first Congress under the new 
Constitution assembled. 

Neither Lansing nor Smith nor Clinton were 
moved by the ninth ratification. The State of 
New York had a commanding commercial geog- 
raphy, and although the population was but 
340,120, it could remain out of the new union 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 121 

until a second convention amended the defective 
Constitution. So thought, also, the majority of 
the members. 

In vain had Hamilton cried out with Cobham, 
" Oh, save my country, heaven ! *' In vain had his 
Scotch tenacity been warmed into compromise by 
the maternal blood of the Creole of St. Nevis. 

The express brought a letter to Hamilton from 
Madison, giving the information that Virginia, the 
most populous State, with a population of 747,- 
610, had ratified the Constitution. The effect 
was electrical. Twelve members deserted the 
anti-Federal party. The Constitution was rati- 
fied, June 26th, by three votes — only three votes 
out of sixty-five. To the end George Clinton 
was a Roman. He refused to ratify. It is im- 
possible not to admire a man who has the cour- 
age of his convictions. The convention adopted 
Melancthon Smith's resolution that the Consti- 
tution be ratified in full confidence that certain 
powers contained in the instrument should not 
be exercised until a general convention of the 
States had been called to propose amendments, 
and with the reservation, modelled after that of 
Virginia, in these strikingly explicit words : ^' We, 
the delegates of the people of the State of New 
York, duly elected and met in convention, hav- 
ing maturely considered the Constitution for the 



122 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

United States of America, agreed to, on the 17th 
of September, 1787, by the convention then as- 
sembled at Philadelphia in the commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania (a copy whereof precedes these 
presents), and having also seriously and deliber- 
ately considered the present situation of the 
United States, do declare and make known that 
all power is originally vested in, and consequently 
derived from, the people, and that government is 
instituted by them for their common interests, 
protection, and security ; that the powers of gov- 
ernment may be reassumed by the people when- 
ever it becomes necessary to their happiness ; that 
every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not 
by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the 
Congress of the United States, or the depart- 
ments of the government thereof, remains to the 
people of the several States, or to their respec- 
tive State governments to whom they may have 
granted the same/' Afterward Rhode Island 
made the same reservation. 

It can scarcely be credited that during the 
ratification conflict there was a secret movement 
to divide the State of New York, said to have 
been approved by Washington and Hamilton. 
A new State was to have been formed in the 
southern portion of the State, whose citizens 
approved ratification, while the rest, if necessary, 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 12^ 

were to be coerced into the Union. Hamilton in 
the convention and elsewhere hinted clearly at the 
eventuality of the coercion of stubborn States. 

Washington signed the Constitution, but ex- 
pressed to General Lafayette discontent with 
provisions which did not meet his approbation. 
The leader of the Revolution desired with Hamil- 
ton a stronger government. He did not believe 
in the capacity of the people for self-government, 
and thus wrote to Gen. Harry Lee : ** It exhibits 
a melancholy verification of what our trans-At- 
lantic foes have predicted, and of another thing, 
to be still more regretted, and is yet more unac- 
countable, that mankind when left to themselves 
are unfit for self-goverment." 

Can a State be constitutionally coerced ? 

No. Hamilton and Madison made an effort 
to so amend the Articles of Confederation as to 
coerce a State when a debtor to the Confedera- 
tion, as was New Hampshire. It signally failed. 
Edmund Randolph, in his draft of a new Con- 
stitution, submitted the following : *^ That the 
national legislature ought to be empowered to 
call forth the force of the Union on a State fail- 
ing to fulfil its duty thereof.'' Not a deputy 
voted for it nor in any wise advocated it. In 
committee of the whole it fell dead. Madison 



124 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

was now against coercion. Hamilton was not. 
Yet he dared not advocate a measure which de- 
stroyed free government. 

Coercion of a State in peace or war is neither 
expressed nor implied in the Constitution. Why ? 
Because if the Union was not consent it was 
tyranny. In fact, there was no implication in 
enumerated powers. 

Was popular opposition to the Constitution wide- 
spread ? 

The Constitution unamended was overwhelm- 
ingly opposed by the people of six States: Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, New York, Rhode Island, 
New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. Deputies 
in these and other States, some from the best, 
others from unquestionable motives, w^ere unfaith- 
ful to their constituents. The machinery of a 
government for the United States had been con- 
structed ; the rights of the States and the people 
overlooked. 

A second convention for revision might have 
healed the differences quickly and fully. It 
might have saved posterity blood, treasure, and 
partisan and sectional conflict in politics. 

Six States ratified unconditionally, namely, 
Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, 
Connecticut, and Maryland. For some time the 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 12^ 

outlook indicated that Mr. Bingham's proposition 
in the old Congress, to divide the country into 
several confederacies ; or the hint of Gouverneur 
Morris in the convention, of a peaceful and 
friendly separation of the Northern and Southern 
States ; or the separate republic composed of New 
York and New England favored by Governor 
George Clinton ; or the Confederacy of Southern 
States favored by Patrick Henry, might at last 
be prophetic. 

Where did the new Congress meet ? 

Congress met in the city of New York. For 
twenty-seven days there was no quorum, which 
compelled Congress to adjourn from day to day. 
On the first day of April, 1789, they elected Gen. 
Frederick Augustus Muhlenburg, of Pennsylvania, 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. 

It required an earnest appeal to the laggard 
members to come to New York and start the 
wheels of the new machine. It was necessary to 
count the electoral votes and apprise General 
Washington that he had been elected President. 
The retired soldier at Mt. Vernon was silent and 
reticent. A strange apathy, if not timidity, had 
fallen on some Senators. 

On the 6th of April the clouds parted and let 
through some sunshine. 



126 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Richard Henry Lee, Senator from Virginia, 
who had offered the first resolution of independ- 
ence, and who had opposed ratification without 
amendments, arrived in New York. That grace- 
ful and eloquent patriot gave the Senate a quorum, 
A temporary president enabled the body to count 
the vote of the electors and notify the President- 
elect. Colonel Lee had left Henry and Mason 
dissatisfied, but he carried with him amendments 
to the Constitution with which to neutralize con- 
solidation. 

While Congress was in a dilemma, which looked 
as if failure might bring chaos, there were anti- 
Federalists who still resisted. As late as the 
9th of April, Representative Tucker of South 
Carolina was the sole member of the House south 
of Virginia. Washington came, and on his in- 
auguration at Federal Hall, in Wall Street, April 
30th, the ^' new form,'* as he called the untried 
government, went into operation. 

Was this ait auspicious beginning ? 

A future Buckle, writing a history of American 
civilization, might reason as follows : The sword 
had achieved the independence of the States. 
The new government was civil. A civilian pure 
and simple should have been elected President. 
General Washington was a coercionist, a national- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 12/ 

ist, and a protectionist. Hamilton ruled. Thomas 
Jefferson should have been the first instead of the 
third President. That event would have made im- 
possible the odiously tyrannical Alien and Sedi- 
tion law of John Adams. 

The reaction came, and Jefferson, the champion 
of the States, broke doNn the nationalistic Feder- 
alists. He gave in his inaugural the true theory 
of the reserved rights of the States and the limita- 
tions of the government of the Union. 

The great war between the States could not 
have occurred if Jefferson had been chosen first 
President and Madison second President. The 
States would have been on their good behavior. 
No one, no party thereafter, would have stood for 
*' the nation," which means localized coercion and 
consequent tyranny. The start was wrong, and 
we have not yet paid the penalty. 

Whatever a future historian may say, we of 
the latter part of the nineteenth century, looking 
over into the new century, find Washington with- 
out a parallel in heroism and patriotism. All 
honor to the model man of the world ! 

What of the third term heresy ? 

There was a deep and bitter prejudice against 
unusual power among our revolutionary ancestors. 
When it was proposed in Virginia, during the war, 



128 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

to make Patrick Henry dictator, there arose a 
cry among patriots which had terrible signifi- 
cance. His brother said to him with deadly de- 
cision : '* I learn that certain parties desire to 
create you dictator. Before sundown of the 
day you accept I will plant a dagger in your 
heart ! " 

Power and long official tenure go together, and 
hence the opposition to a third term President. 
One term was regarded by Washington as enough. 
He did not desire to serve a second term because 
of the opposition generated by the idea and his 
distaste for public office, Thomas Jefferson, in a 
warm patriotic letter, urged Washington to permit 
his name to go before the people for a second 
term. He contended that it was the duty of the 
President to make a sacrifice of his personal feel- 
ings for the good of his country. After a second 
term, literally forced upon him by political op- 
ponents as well as friends, he never had a thought 
of a third term. Thus was established that un- 
written law which will always make it perilous for 
any man whose ambition prompts him to override 
it and invoke the vengeance of patriots on dic- 
tators. 

This Washingtonian precedent is a declaration 
to the States and the people that ROTATION IN 
OFFICE IS THE LIFE OF A REPUBLIC. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. I2g 

What was the Declaration of Independence ? 

An ordinance of '' separation " from Great 
Britain. It was a prophecy of the coming first 
and second Constitutions, especially of the Bill of 
Rights of the latter. It expressly declares for 
** separation '' in the preamble to the bill of indict- 
ment against George III. Jefferson knew that it 
would intensify hostilities. 

Is separation a peaceful and efficacious remedy ? 

It never can be and it would be folly to think 
so where there are conflicting opinions and in- 
terests. 

Revolution is a natural right. It is therefore a 
perfect right which can enforce itself. Separation 
is an imperfect right, and cannot enforce itself. 

If ever a successful war is waged against the 
Union by the people, growing out of centralized 
encroachments, the United States would cease to 
be, but the States would live. As an example, 
the Confederation passed away, but the States 
survived. Ours is not an " indestructible Union,'* 
but the States are indestructible bodies politic. 
They are perpetually vivified by the people who 
occupy them. 

What did Choate say ? 

July 4, 1858, Rufus Choate remarked that " the 
9 



130 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

States may be compared to the primordial par- 
ticles of matter, indivisible, indestructible, impen- 
etrable, and exist in their independent identity, 
while the Union is an artificial aggregation of such 
particles/' Chief Justice Chase's glittering epi- 
gram of an '' indestructible Union of indestruc- 
tible States '' seems to have been plagiarized from 
Webster's '' liberty and union one and indivisi- 
ble, now and forever," and from Choate's brilliant 
comparison. 

What were the opinions in subsequent days ? 

Josiah Quincy, in 1811, seemed to think peace- 
ful separation could be accomplished. On the 
question of admitting Louisiana, Mr. Quincy, 
member of Congress from Massachusetts, said : 
^' If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion 
that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; 
that it will free the States from their moral obliga^ 
tion, and as it will be the right of all, so it will 
be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a 
separation — amicably if they can, violently if they 
must." 

In December, 1814, the Hartford convention 
reported : *' If the Union be destined to disso- 
lution by reason of the multiplied abuses of 
bad administration, it should, if possible, be the 
work of peaceable times and deliberate consent. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. I3I 

Wherever it shall appear that the causes are radi- 
cal and permanent, a separation by an equitable 
arrangement will be preferable to an alliance by 
constraint among nominal friends, but real ene- 
mies/' In 1844 the legislature of Massachusetts 
adopted a resolution declaring : '' The Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts, faithful to a compact 
between the people of the United States, accord- 
ing to the plain meaning and intent in which it 
was understood by them, is sincerely for its pres- 
ervation, but that it is determined, as it doubts 
not the other States are, to submit to undele- 
gated power in no body of men on earth ; " and 
that ^' the project of the annexation of Texas, 
unless arrested on the threshold, may tend to drive 
these States into a dissolution of the Union/' 

Mr. Madison, the principal draftsman of the 
treaty between the States, lays down this rule: 
'' It is an established doctrine on the subject of 
treaties that all articles are mutual conditions 
of each other ; that a breach of any article is a 
breach of the whole treaty ; and that a breach 
committed by either of the parties absolves the 
others, and authorizes them, if they please, to 
pronounce the compact violated and void. 
Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to 
those delicate truths for a justification for dis- 
pensing with the consent of particular States to a 



132 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

dissolution of the Federal pact, will not the com- 
plaining parties find it a difficult task to answer 
the multiplied and important infractions with I 
which they may be confronted?" 

What say the famous Virginia and Kentucky 
resolutions? 

The Virginia resolutions were drawn up by 
James Madison, and the Kentucky resolutions 
by Thomas Jefferson. They were aimed at the 
Alien and Sedition law, as before stated. The. 
following is the first Kentucky resolution : 

''- Resolved, that the several States comprising 
the United States of America are not united on 
the principle of unlimited submission to their 
general government, but that, by compact under 
the style and title of a Constitution for the 
United States, and of amendments thereto, they 
constituted a general government, for special pur- 
poses, delegated to that government certain defi- 
nite powers, reserving each State to itself, the 
residuary mass of right to their own self-govern- 
ment, and that whensoever the general govern- 
ment assumes undelegated powers, its acts are 
unauthoritative, void, and of no force ; that to 
this compact each State acceded as a State, and 
is an integral party, that this government created 
by this compact, was not made the exclusive or 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 33 

final judge of the extent of the powers delegated 
to itself, since that would have made its discre- 
tion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its 
powers ; but that, as in all other cases of compact 
among parties having no common judge, each 
party has an equal right to judge for itself, as 
well of infractions as of the mode and measure of 
redress.'* 

What is meant by '^ no common judge " f 

The Articles of Confederation provided for a 
•* perpetual union/' The new Constitution simply 
for a ^'more perfect union " — that is, a union of 
consent, not of force. The Articles of Confedera- 
tion provided that no change should be made 
in the Confederation ^' unless such alterations be 
agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and 
be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of 
every State." The new Constitution provides for 
amendments to it by three-fourths of the legisla- 
tures of the States, or by State conventions, in 
either case to ratify alterations proposed by Con- 
gress. 

Under the Confederation the Articles pre- 
cluded ^' a common judge." The new Constitu- 
tion does not. The framers failed to make pro- 
vision for an umpire in case of a conflict of States 
such as occurred in 1861-65. 



134 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 



» 



Should there be an umpire ? 

The foregoing quoted opinions of Madison, 
Quincy, and Jefferson, of the Hartford conven- 
tion and legislature of Massachusetts, show the 
necessity of a '' common judge/* 

Defect. — Three-fourths of the States alter and 
amend the Constitution. Why should not three- 
fourths in convention of the whole be a '* com- 
mon judge*'? It is a curable defect. The lon- 
gevity of the Union would be indefinitely promoted 
by such an amendment. 

What are the United States governmentally ? 

An extension of the governments of the several 
States. That is all. In December, 1825, only six 
months before his death, Thomas Jefferson gave, 
as the result of his great experience, study, and 
reflection, the following exposition of the origin, 
limitation, and intent of the government of the 
United States, which was a protest to the Virginia 
legislature : 

'' The States in North America which confed- 
erated to establish their independence of the gov- 
ernment of Great Britain, of which Virginia was 
one, became, on that acquisition, free and inde- 
pendent States, and, as such, authorized to con- 
stitute governments, each for itself, in such form 
as it thought best. 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 1 35 

" They entered into a compact (which is called 
the Constitution of the United States of America) 
by which they agreed to unite in a single govern- 
ment as to their relations with each other, and with 
foreign nations, and as to certain articles particularly 
specified. They retained, at the same time, each to 
itself, the other rights of independent government, 
comprehending mainly their domestic relations. 

'' For the administration of their Federal branch, 
they agreed to appoint, in conjunction, a distinct 
set of functionaries, legislative, executive, and ju- 
diciary, in the manner settled in that compact ; 
while to each severally, and of course, remained 
its original right of appointing, each for itself, a 
separate set of functionaries, legislative, execu- 
tive, and judiciary, also for administering the do- 
mestic branch of their respective governments. 

*' These two sets of officers, each independent of 
the other, constitute thus a whole government for 
each State separately ; the powers ascribed to the 
one, as specifically made Federal, exercised over 
the whole ; the residuary powers retained to the 
other, exercisable exclusively over its particular 
State, foreign herein, each to the other, as they 
were before the original compact/' 

What is to be thought of Jefferson's final words ? 
The foregoing should be closely read by every 



136 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Citizen and student of Constitutional law. It is 
invaluable also to the foreign diplomatist, who is 
slow to understand the relations of principal and 
agent as set forth in the simple compact between 
the States. It is the clearest and most states- 
manlike exposition which language can convey. 
It is like the Kohinoor, which holds within its 
translucent self the value of a hundred gems of 
the mineral garden. It embodies more than Kent 
and Story knew of the Constitution, and exceeds 
and satisfies the desires of the warmest decentral- 
ist. It is the very crystallization of age, expe- 
rience, and patriotism. That a man of nearly 
eighty-three should write such a brief but exhaust- 
ive commentary is as wonderful as that the same 
mind at thirty-three should have penned the 
Declaration. 

Did the late war nationalize the Constitution ? 

No. In the Slaughterhouse cases (16 Wall. 82) 
the effect of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fif- 
teenth Amendments was fully considered by the 
Supreme Court, and afterwards thus summarized 
by Justice Miller in an address before the Uni- 
versity of Michigan, June, 1887, as follows: 

'' With the exception of the specific provisions 
in the three amendments (13, 14, 15) for the pro- 
tection of the personal rights of the citizens and 



OF THE UNITED STA7ES. 13/ 

people of the United States, and the necessary 
restrictions upon the power of the States for that 
purpose, with the additions to the power of the 
general government to enforce those provisions, 
no substantial change has been made in the rela- 
tions of the State governments to the Federal 
government/' 

Chief Justice Fuller, for the Supreme Court, 
held in the New York Electrical Execution case 
that the Fourteenth Amendment " did not radi- 
cally change the whole theory of the relations of 
the State and Federal governments to each other 
and of the people to both." This opinion was re- 
affirmed in the McElvaine case in December, 1891. 

Is the Thirteenth Ainendment valid? 

It is. The ratification of the amendment, 
December 18, 1865, by the united action of North- 
ern and Southern white legislatures was a re- 
newed affirmation of the compact between the 
States, and a repudiation of the unconstitutional 
Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, 
on January i, 1863, nearly two years before the 
conclusion of the war between the States. 

It will be seen by the certificate of Secretary 
Seward that the amendment could not have been 
ratified but by a union of the States that had 
recently been at war with each other. 



138 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

What was the history of the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment ? 

The war between the States being over, the 
Southern white people, as the governing class, 
returned at once to their duties under their sev- 
eral State Constitutions and the Constitution of 
the United States, and ten of their respective 
legislatures proceeded to emancipate the negro 
slaves. Alabama called a convention, and was 
the first Southern State to emancipate the 
negroes. The vote stood ninety-eight for, two 
against. Texas, Mississippi, and Florida followed 
as soon as possible. Hence the ample vote for 
the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. 

The Confederate States having failed to bring 
about a final separation, it was held that in con- 
sequence of such failure each of them were in 
and of the Union. The logic of this position, 
voiced by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, met the approval of the Congress at 
Washington. Both sections acted together in 
adding the following amendment to the Consti- 
tution : 

Article Thirteenth. 

Section i. Neither slavery nor involuntary ser- 
vitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof 
the party shall have been duly convicted, shall 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 39 

exist within the United States, or any place sub- 
ject to their jurisdiction. 

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce 
this article by appropriate legislation. 

The following is the certificate of the Secretary 
of State of the United States, announcing the 
ratification of the foregoing article : 

William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the 
United States : 

To all to whom these presents may come^ 
Greeting : 

Know ye, That whereas, the Congress of the 
United States, on the first of February last, 
passed a resolution, which is in the words follow- 
ing, namely : ** A resolution submitting to the 
legislatures of the several States a proposition to 
amend the Constitution of the United States. 

** Resolved^ by the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives of the United States of America in 
Congress assembled (two-thirds of both houses 
concurring) that the following article be proposed 
to the legislatures of the several States as an 
amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of 
said legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and 
purposes, as a part of the said Constitution, 
namely ; " (See Art. XIII., above.) 



14^ CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION- 

And whereas, it appears from official documents 
on file in this department that the amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States proposed 
as aforesaid, has been ratified by the legislatures 
of the States of Illinois, Rhode Island, Michigan, 
Maryland, New York, West Virginia, Maine, 
Kansas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, Indiana, Louisiana, Min- 
nesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Tennessee, Arkansas, 
Connecticut, New Hampshire, South Carolina, 
Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia ; in all 
twenty-seven States ; 

And whereas^ the whole number of States in 
the United States is thirty-six ; and whereas the 
before specially named States whose legislatures 
have ratified the said proposed amendment con- 
stitute three-fourths of the whole number of 
States in the United States : 

Now, therefore, be it known that I, William H. 
Seward, Secretary of State of the United States, 
by virtue and in pursuance of the second section 
of the act of Congress, approved the twentieth of 
April, eighteen hundred and eighteen, entitled 
'* An act to provide for the publication of the laws 
of the United States, and for other purposes," do 
hereby certify that the amendment aforesaid has 
become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part 
of the Constitution of the United States. 



OF THE UNITED STATES: I4I 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my 
hand, and caused the seal of the Department of 
State to be afifixed. 

Done at the City of Washington this eighteenth 
day of December, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and of the 
independence of the United States of America 
the ninetieth. 

[L. S.] William H. Sev^ard, 

Secretary of State. 

Does the Thirteenth Amendment fully abolish ? 

No. Slavery and involuntary servitude are 
lawful as punishment for crime against a State or 
the United States. Convicted criminals of any 
race or complexion are included. Some States 
have sold and still sell the service and labor of 
convicts to the highest bidder. 

It is plain that if the Thirteenth Amendment 
is valid, then the two succeeding ones cannot be^ 

Why so ? 

The reconstruction legislation of 1866, having 
no constitutional warrant, was void. To have the 
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments ratified, 
it was suddenly discovered that the Southern 
States were not integral parts of the Union, and 
would have to be territorialized and readmitted. 



142 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Negro suffrage was to be legalized by disfranchis- 
ing the whites, save a small class called '' carpet- 
baggers." New and pliant legislatures were set 
up in the military departments, presided over by 
pro-consuls. 

Is the Fourteenth Amendment valid ? 

No. 

Article Fourteenth. 

Section i. All persons born or naturalized in 
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction 
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of 
the State wherein they reside. No State shall 
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United 
States ; nor shall any State deprive any person of 
life, liberty, or property without due process of 
law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdic- 
tion the equal protection of the laws. 

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned 
among the several States according to their re- 
spective numbers, counting the whole number of 
persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. 
But when the right to vote at any election for 
the choice of electors for President and Vice- 
President of the United States, Representatives in 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 143 

Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a 
State, or the members of the legislature thereof, 
is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such 
State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens 
of the United States, or in any way abridged 
except for participation in rebellion or other 
crime, the basis of representation therein shall be 
reduced in the proportion which the number of 
such male citizens shall bear to the whole num- 
ber of male citizens twenty-one years of age in 
such State. 

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Rep- 
resentative in Congress, or elector of President 
a«nd Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or 
military, under the United States, or under any 
State, who, having previously taken an oath as a 
member of Congress, or as an officer of the United 
States, or as a member of any State legislature, 
or as any executive or judicial officer of any State, 
to support the Constitution of the United States, 
shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion 
against the same, or given aid or comfort to the 
enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote 
of two-thirds of each house, remove such disa- 
bility. 

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of 
the United States authorized by law, including 



144 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

debts incurred for payment of pensions and boun- 
ties for services in suppressing insurrection or re- 
bellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the 
United States nor any State shall assume or pay 
any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrec- 
tion or rebellion against the United States, or any 
claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave ; 
but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall 
be held illegal and void. 

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to 
enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions 
of this article. 

Were States counted in by Congress ? 

Yes. Ohio and New Jersey had rescinded their 
consent to the ratification of the Fourteenth 
Amendment. As sovereigns they had the right 
to do so. Their withdrawals were filed in full 
time in the office of the Secretary of State at 
Washington. As will hereafter be shown, New 
York did the same in respect to the Fifteenth 
Amendment. 

Secretary Seward would not certify to the rati- 
fication of the Fourteenth Amendment. He 
spoke of the Southern legislatures that had rati- 
fied, as newly constituted and newly established 
bodies avowing themselves to be law-making pow- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 45 

ers. The following are the remarks and certifi- 
cates of the Secretary of State of the United 
States: 

William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the 
United States : 

To all to whom these presents may come, 
Greeting : 

Whereas^ the Congress of the United States, on 
or about the sixteenth of June, in the year one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, passed a 
resolution, which is in the words and figures fol- 
lowing, to wit : 

'' Joint resolution proposing an amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States. 

*' Be it resolved by the Senate and House of 
Representatives of the United States of America 
in Congress assembled (two-thirds of both houses 
concurring) that the following article be pro- 
posed to the legislatures of the several States as 
an amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of 
said legislatures, shall be valid as part of the Con- 
stitution, namely:" (See Art. XIV., above.) 

And whereas, by the second section of the act 
of Congress, approved the twentieth of April, one 
thousand eight hundred and eighteen, entitled 
'' An act to provide for the publication of the 

10 



146 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

laws of the United States, and for other pur- 
poses," it is made the duty of the Secretary of 
State forthwith to cause any amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States, which has been 
adopted according to the provisions of the said 
Constitution, to be pubHshed in the newspapers 
authorized to promulgate the laws,- with his cer- 
tificate specifying the States by which the same 
may have been adopted, and that the same has 
become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a 
part of the Constitution of the United States; 

And whereas, neither the act just quoted from, 
nor any other law, expressly or by conclusive im- 
plication, authorizes the Secretary of State to 
determine and decide doubtful questions as to the 
authenticity of the organization of State legisla- 
tures, or as to the power of any State legislature 
to recall a previous act or resolution of ratifica- 
tion of any amendment proposed to the Constitu- 
tion ; 

And whereas, it appears from official docu- 
ments on file in this department that the amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United States, 
proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the 
legislatures of the States of Connecticut, New 
Hampshire, Tennessee, New Jersey, Oregon, Ver- 
mont, New York, Ohio, Illinois, West Virginia, 
Kansas, Maine, Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, Min- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. I47 

nesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, 
Michigan, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Iowa ; 

And whereas, it further appears from documents 
on file in this, department that the amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States, proposed 
as aforesaid, has also been ratified by newly con- 
stituted and newly established bodies, avowing 
themselves to be and acting as the legislatures, 
respectively, of the States of Arkansas, Florida, 
North CaroHna, Louisiana, South Carolina, and 
Alabama ; 

And whereas, it further appears from official 
documents on file in this department that the 
legislatures of two of the States first above 
enumerated, to wit, Ohio and New Jersey, have 
since passed resolutions, respectively, withdraw- 
ing the consent of each of said States to the 
aforesaid amendment ; 

And whereas, it is deemed a matter of doubt 
and uncertainty whether such resolutions are not 
irregular, invalid, and, therefore, ineffectual for 
withdrawing the consent of the said two States, 
or of either of them, to the aforesaid amendment ; 

And whereas, the whole number of States in 
the United States is thirty-seven, to wit : New 
Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Con- 
necticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, 



148 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

South Carolina, Georgia, Vermont, Kentucky, 
Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, 
IlHnois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, 
Michigan, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Min- 
nesota, California, Oregon, Kansas, West Virginia, 
Nevada, and Nebraska ; 

And whereas, the twenty-three States first 
hereinbefore named, whose legislatures have rati- 
fied the said proposed amendment, and the six 
States next thereafter named, as having ratified 
the said proposed amendment by newly consti- 
tuted and established legislative bodies, together 
constitute three-fourths of the whole number of 
States in the United States: 

Now, therefore, be it known that I, William H. 
Seward, Secretary of State of the United States, 
by virtue and in pursuance of the second section 
of the act of Congress, approved the twentieth of 
April, eighteen hundred and eighteen, hereinbefore 
cited, do hereby certify that, if the resolutions of 
the legislatures of Ohio and New Jersey, ratifying 
the aforesaid amendment, are to be deemed as 
remaining of full force and effect, notwithstanding 
the subsequent resolutions of the legislatures of 
those States, which purport to withdraw the con- 
sent of said States from such ratification, then the 
aforesaid amendment has been ratified in the 
manner hereinbefore mentioned, and so has be- 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 49 

come valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part 
of the Constitution of the United States. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my 
hand, and caused the seal of the Department of 
State to be afifixed. 

Done at the City of Washington this twentieth 
day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand 
eight hundred and sixty-eight, and of the inde- 
pendence of the United States of America the 
ninety-third. 

[L. S.] William H. Seward, 

Secretary of State, 

William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the 
United States : 

To all to whom these presents may come, 
Greeting : 

Whereas^ by an act of Congress, passed on the 
twentieth of April, one thousand eight hundred 
and eighteen, entitled ^^ An act to provide for the 
publication of the laws of the United States, and 
for other purposes,'' it is declared that, whenever 
official notice shall have been received at the 
Department of State that any amendment which 
heretofore has been and hereafter may be pro- 
posed to the Constitution of the United States 
has been adopted according to the provisions of 
the Constitution, it shall be the duty of the said 



ISO CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Secretary of State forthwith to cause the said 
amendment to be published in the newspapers 
authorized to promulgate the laws, with his cer- 
tificate, specifying the States by which the same 
may have been adopted, and that the same has 
become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part 
of the Constitution of the United States; 

And whereas, the Congress of the United 
States, on or about the sixteenth day of June, one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, submitted 
to the legislatures of the several States a proposed 
amendment to the Constitution in the following 
words, to wit : 

'^ Joint resolution proposing an amendment to 
the Constitution of the United States. 

" Be it resolved by the Senate and House of 
Representatives of the United States of America 
in Congress assembled (two-thirds of both houses 
concurring) that the following article be pro- 
posed to the legislatures of the several States 
as an amendment to the Constitution of the 
United States, which, when ratified by three- 
fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid as part 
of the Constitution, namely:'' (See Art. XIV., 
above.) 

And whereas, the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives of the Congress of the United States, 
on the twenty-first day of July, one thousand eight 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 151 

hundred and sixty-eight, adopted and transmitted 
to the Department of State a concurrent resolu- 
tion, which concurrent resolution is in the words 
and figures following, to wit : 

•' In Senate of the United States, ) 

''July 21, 1868, \ 

" Whereas^ the legislatures of the States of 
Connecticut, Tennessee, New Jersey, Oregon, 
Vermont, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, In- 
diana, Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Wis- 
consin, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Michigan, 
Nevada, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ne- 
braska, Maine, Iowa, Arkansas, Florida, North 
Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana, 
being three-fourths and more of the several States 
of the Union, have ratified the Fourteenth Article 
of Amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States, duly proposed by two-thirds of each house 
of the thirty-ninth Congress ; therefore, 

''Resolved, by the Senate (the House of Repre- 
sentatives concurring) that said Fourteenth Arti- 
cle is hereby declared to be a part of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, and it shall be 
duly promulgated as such by the Secretary of 
State. 

^^ Attest: Geo. C. Gorham, 

Secretary!' 



152 catechism of the constitution 

"• In the House of Representatives,) 

''July 21, 1868. \ 

"" Resolved^ that the House of Representatives 
concur in the foregoing concurrent resolution of 
the Senate, declaring the ratification of the Four- 
teenth Article of Amendment of the Constitution 
of the United States. 

''Attest: Edw'd McPherson, 

Clerkr 

And whereas, official notice has been received 
at the Department of State that the legislatures 
of the several States next hereinafter named have, 
at the times respectively herein mentioned, taken 
the proceedings hereinafter recited upon or in 
relation to the ratification of the said proposed 
amendment, called Article Fourteenth, namely: 
The legislature of Connecticut ratified the amend- 
ment June 30, 1866; the legislature of New- 
Hampshire ratified it July 7, 1866; the legis- 
lature of Tennessee ratified it July 19, 1866; 
the legislature of New Jersey ratified it Septem- 
ber II, 1866, and the legislature of the same 
State passed a resolution in April, 1868, to with- 
draw its consent to it ; the legislature of Oregon 
ratified it September 19, 1866; the legislature 
of Texas rejected it November i, 1866; the 
legislature of Vermont ratified it on or previous 



OF THE UNITED STATES.' 153 

to November 9, 1866; the legislature of Georgia 
rejected it November 13, 1866, and the legisla- 
ture of the same State ratified it July 21, 1868; 
the legislature of North Carolina rejected it 
December 4, 1866, and the legislature of the 
same State ratified it July 4, 1868 ; the legisla- 
ture of South Carolina rejected it December 20, 

1866, and the legislature of the same State rati- 
fied it July 9, 1868 ; the legislature of Virginia 
rejected it January 9, 1867; the legislature of 
Kentucky rejected it January 10, 1867 ; the leg- 
islature of New York ratified it January 10, 1867 ; 
the legislature of Ohio ratified it January 11, 

1867, and the legislature of the same State 
passed a resolution in January, 1868, to withdraw 
its consent to it ; the legislature of Illinois rati- 
fied it January 15, 1867 ; the legislature of West 
Virginia ratified it January 16, 1867; the legisla- 
ture of Kansas ratified it January 18, 1867; the 
legislature of Maine ratified it January 19, 1867; 
the legislature of Nevada ratified it January 22, 
1867; the legislature of Missouri ratified it on or 
previous to January 26, 1867 ; the legislature of 
Indiana ratified it January 29, 1867; the legisla- 
ture of Minnesota ratified it February i, 1867 ; 
the legislature of Rhode Island ratified it Feb- 
ruary 7, 1867; the legislature of Delaware re- 
jected it February 7, 1867; the legislature of 



154 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Wisconsin ratified it February 13, 1867; the leg- 
islature of Pennsylvania ratified it February 13, 
1867; the legislature of Michigan ratified it 
February 15, 1867; the legislature of Massachu- 
setts ratified it March 20, 1867; the legislature 
of Maryland rejected it March 23, 1867; the leg- 
islature of Nebraska ratified it June 15, 1867; the 
legislature of Iowa ratified it April 3, 1868; the 
legislature of Arkansas ratified it April 6, 1868; 
the legislature of Florida ratified it June 9, 1868; 
the legislature of Louisiana ratified it July 9, 
1868 ; and the legislature of Alabama ratified it 
July 13, 1868: 

Now, therefore, be it known that I, William 
H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United 
States, in execution of the aforesaid act and of 
the aforesaid concurrent resolution of the 21st of 
July, 1868, and in conformance thereto, do hereby 
direct the said proposed amendment to the Con- 
stitution of the United States to be published 
in the newspapers authorized to promulgate the 
laws of the United States, and I do hereby 
certify that the said proposed amendment has 
been adopted, in the manner hereinbefore men- 
tioned, by the States specified in the said concur- 
rent resolution, namely : The States of Connecti- 
cut, New Hampshire, Tennessee, New Jersey, 
Oregon, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Illinois, West 



OF THE UNITED STATES.' 1 55 

Virginia, Kansas, Maine, Nevada, Missouri, 
Indiana, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, 
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Massachusetts, Nebraska, 
Iowa, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Louisi- 
ana, South Carolina, Alabama, and also by the 
legislature of the State of Georgia ; the States 
thus specified being more than three-fourths of 
the States of the United States. 

And I do further certify that the said amend- 
ment has become valid, to all intents and pur- 
poses, as a part of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set 
my hand, and caused the seal of the Department 
of State to be affixed. 

Done at the City of Washington this twenty- 
eighth day of July, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight, and of 
the independence of the United States of Amer- 
ica the ninety-third. 

[L. S.] William H. Seward, 

Secretary of State. 

What are some of the pernicious results of the 
amendment ? 

Secretary Seward, in ^^ doubt and uncertainty/' 
referred the matter to Congress. That body 
refused to regard the latest legislation of Ohio 



156 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

and New Jersey. The Congress wanted obedient 
States, and cared not for the fundamental and 
time-honored fact that fraud vitiates all acts for- 
ever. The counting in of two States was also 
coercive, and so wholly unconstitutional and void. 
This amendment, ratified by white and negro 
legislatures, is now the last resort of criminals. 
It was intended to protect negroes in their civil 
rights. The Supreme Court of the United States 
decided the Civil Rights act to be unconstitutional. 
But criminals use the amendment to stay the 
judgments of State courts while pleading for ap- 
peals to United States tribunals. The so-called 
amendment has become odious to law-abiding 
people. It is incalculably mischievous. Section 
third forbids citizens of the United States from 
fighting for their country unless Congress removes 
their disability. Political insanity could go no 
further ! 

Is there further danger in the amendment ? 

There is. In the case of O'Neil vs. Vermont, 
Justices Field, Harlan, and Brewer delivered a 
minority opinion, which, if held by a majority of 
the Supreme Court, would change our form of 
government. This minority opinion made no 
distinction between a citizen of the United States 
and a citizen of a State. By the early amend- 



OF THE UNITED STATES: 15/ 

ments, and by the Fourteenth so-called Amend- 
ment, a citizen of the United States has, according 
to these justices, privileges and immunities which 
place him above State action. Carried to its con- 
clusion, the agent of the States would become 
supreme, and reduce the States to subject prov- 
inces and the citizens of States to subjects. It 
would drag the State criminal law of the first 
ten amendments into the arena of general govern- 
ment jurisdiction. The State of Mississippi would 
be compelled to relegate to the d^ad-letter book 
her educational qualifications for voters in com- 
mon with older States that have adopted suffrage 
reform. In fine, centralization would have its 
genesis, and conclude with the usual historic apoc- 
alyptic evils. 

Is the Fifteenth Amendment valid? 

No. Secretary Fish counted in New York, 
although he had officially been notified of the 
withdrawal of the consent of that State to the 
ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment. The 
forcible counting in of a State nullifies the act of 
promulgation. The Southern white and negro 
legislatures were unconstitutional, which makes 
their ratification void. Violent coercive measures 
in Indiana and some other States also invalidate 
the amendment; 



158 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

This amendment is unskilfully drawn. Black 
is no color. It is simply the absence of color. 
Mulattoes are colored, because yellow is a color. 
Suffrage is not a right, but a privilege which can 
be extended, or modified, or withdrawn, as in the 
cases of criminals, by the sovereign State. In 
some of the States, suffrage in certain cases is 
allowed to be exercised by aliens who have sim- 
ply declared their intention to become citizens of 
said States and of the United States, and also 
by females. A. W. Clason, in ''The Fallacy of 
1776/' says : '' War in 1861 was the logical out- 
come of the fallacy of 1776, and if there were any 
fallacies of opinion in 1861, they in their fullness 
of time will bear equally bitter fruit." The Four- 
teenth and Fifteenth Amendments are fallacies 
which belong to the latter period in our history. 

In a late special paper Murat Halstead argues 
that both' amendments, from Grant to Harrison, 
have been nullified, and no President or Congress 
can stop it. He urges the repeal of the Fifteenth 
Amendment because it is only '* a sentiment " ! 

Article Fifteenth. 

Section i. The right of citizens of the United 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by 
the United States or by any State on account of 
race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 



OF THE UNITED STATES/ 1 59 

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to 
enforce this article by appropriate legislation. 

The following is the certificate of the Secretary 
of the United States, announcing the ratification 
of the foregoing article : 

Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State of the United 
States : 

To all to whom these presents may come, 
Greeting : 

Know ye, that the Congress of the United 
States, on or about the twenty-seventh day of 
February, in the year one thousand eight hundred 
and sixty-nine, passed a resolution in the words 
and figures following, to wit : 

*^ A resolution proposing an amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States. 

*^ Resolved, by the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States of America in Con- 
gress assembled (two-thirds of both houses con- 
curring) that the following article be proposed to 
the legislatures of the several States as an amend- 
ment to the Constitution of the United States, 
which, when ratified by three-fourths of said legis- 
latures, shall be valid as part of the Constitution, 
namely : ** (See Art. XV., above.) 

And, further, that it appears from official docu- 
ments on file in this department that the amend- 



l6o CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

• 

ment to the Constitution of the United States, 
proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the 
legislatures of the States of Maine, North Carolina, 
West Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Louisi- 
ana, Michigan, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ar- 
kansas, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New 
York, New Hampshire, Nevada, Vermont, Vir- 
ginia, Alabama, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Iowa, 
Kansas, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Nebraska, and 
Texas — in all, twenty-nine States ; 

And, further, that the States whose legislatures 
have so ratified the said proposed amendment 
constitute three-fourths of the whole number of 
States in the United States ; 

And, further, that it appears from an official 
document on file in this department that the legis- 
lature of the State of New York has since passed 
resolutions claiming to withdraw the said ratifica- 
tion of the said amendment, which had been made 
by the legislature of that State, and of which 
official notice had been filed in this department ; 

And, further, that it appears from an official 
document on file in this department that the 
legislature of Georgia has by resolution ratified 
the said proposed amendment : 

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Hamilton 
Fish, Secretary of State of the United States, by 
virtue and in pursuance of the second section of 



OF THE UNITED STATES. l6l 

the act of Congress, approved the twentieth day of 
April, in thayear eighteen hundred and eighteen, 
entitled '' An act to provide for the publication 
of the laws of the United States, and for other 
purposes,'* do hereby certify that the amendment 
aforesaid has become valid, to all intents and pur- 
poses, as part of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my 
hand and caused the seal of the Department of 
State to be affixed. 

Done at the City of Washington this thirtieth 
day of March, in the year of our Lord one thou- 
sand eight hundred and seventy, and of the inde- 
pendence of the United States the ninety-fourth. 

[L. S.] Hamilton Fish. 

The Congress of 1868-70 were the first to 
** count in" States. *' Counting in '' New Jersey, 
Ohio, and New York was disfranchisement of sov- 
ereign States. It was an act of numerical force, 
and a Cromwellian usurpation. This fractional 
body of factionists initiated the Electoral Com- 
mission of 1877. 

Is the title ^' Secretary of State ** proper ? 

It is not. The title and signature should be 
Secretary of the United States. The United 
II 



1 62 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

States are not a State. Each State has a Secretary 
of State, presiding over a Department of State. 
The United States established prior to 1789 a 
Department of Foreign Affairs. The chief was 
then known as Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Sub- 
sequently his ofifice was renamed. He now out- 
ranks all other Cabinet members because his ofifice 
is the oldest, and he is the first of them to succeed 
to the Presidency, by a late law, in case of the 
death, disability, resignation, or removal of both 
the President and Vice-President. Jefferson was 
the first *' Secretary of State '' under the new 
Constitution. 

Will you describe the evolution of constitutional 
government? ^ 

The Stamp Act, which was an internal revenue 
tax on written instruments used in judicial and 
commercial proceedings, and upon articles w^hich 
were necessary to the ordinary transactions of 
business, such as deeds, indentures, pamphlets, 
newspapers, advertisements, almanacs, and de- 
grees conferred by schools, and other things, 
moved Patrick Henry to introduce into the Vir- 
ginia Assembly a burning protest. This led to a 
call from Massachusetts for the assembling of a 
first Congress on the 7th October, 1765, which 
issued a declaration of rights and grievances. 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 1 63 

Nine colonies were represented. This was called 
the Stamp Act Congress. The act passed by the 
British Parliament to force the tea of the East 
India Company on the colonies, assembled the 
second Congress. There were other '' griev- 
ances/' such as taxing the imports of one col- 
ony carried into another. 

The Colonists rebelled, and fought inside the 
British Union. Then came the atrocities of a 
German contingent of the British army, by which 
the people of the United Colonies suffered. These 
acts caused the Declaration of Independence to 
pass without submitting the measure to the peo- 
ple. It had no constituency. Congress could re- 
peal it at any moment during their session. Thus 
to the inhumanity of the Waldeckers and Hes- 
sians is to be ascribed the transfer of hostilities 
of the United Colonists to the outside of the 
British Crown. 

Before it was called rebellion ; thenceforth it 
was called a war for independence. In 1778 Great 
Britain sent, in advance of the treaty of alliance 
with France, acts of Parliament granting in full a 
'^ redress of grievances.'' Washington and Con- 
gress suppressed them. The war had gone too 
far. Ambition on one hand and justice on the 
other declared dually for complete independence. 
Dr. Franklin was the author of the '^ Perpetual 



164 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

Union '' Articles of Confederation. They went 
down before the sovereign idea of consent. Dean 
Swift had given Jefferson and Franklin a great 
hint. It was this: ^* Government without the 
consent of the governed is the very definition 
of tyranny.'' Jefferson engrafted this caustic 
truth upon the Declaration. Franklin, as a mem- 
ber of the *' Federal Convention," retreated from 
*' Perpetual Union." Out of the mere commer- 
cial convention at Annapolis originated a politi- 
cal movement from which, with the general plan 
of the Articles of Confederation, sprung the Con- 
stitution of 1787. Only Rhode Island and North 
Carolina clung to the first Constitution, refusing 
to enter the new Union. 

So, then, Tariff or Tax was the father of Colo- 
nial Rebellion, Independence the grandchild, and 
Constitutional Government the great-grandchild. 
Truly a strange political evolution ! 

Are there new developiiig historic chapters ? 

Yes. It is charged that the French Premier, 
the Count Vergennes, stimulated the Colonists 
through the agency of spies and gold. The 
Baron De Kalb was said to have been one of 
his reliable agents. 

It is charged that ratification of the Constitu- 
tion was secured in some cases by the undue 



OF THE UNITED STATE'S. 1 65 

influence of the owners of the forty millions 
public debt of the Confederation, to secure its 
validity and payment as set forth in Article VI. 
of the new Constitution. Ambitious motives 
were ascribed to men whom we are accustomed 
to regard as unselfish patriots. On the whole, we 
are led to imagine that history and biography 
have been cooked with the art of literary Francatel- 
lis, and that our ancestors were neither better nor 
worse than their descendants of this year of grace. 
Human nature in the old colonial days, in our 
young stateshood, and in our nearly full-grown 
confederation has not essentially altered, nor will 
it, whether man was evolved from a protoplasm, 
an ape, or Adam. It still, as in primordial socie- 
ties, seeks office, loves power, and courts ease 
and adulation. Our forefathers were simply men, 
and neither gods nor demigods, nor are their de- 
scendants the sons of gods or of demigods. Our 
late war made cheap great men, and that fact is 
causing a deeper investigation into preceding his- 
tory. The mythic hero is passing away with the 
roseate eulogist, for the hand of Truth is writing 
history and biography. 

Is the Constitution complete ? 

We have seen that it is amendable, and marked 
some omissions elsewhere, but such is the consoli- 



1 66 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

dating tendencies of the latter-day '* strong gov- 
ernment " men or nationalists that it were best 
to let it alone. To this rule there may be two 
exceptions, viz. : the completion of Section 4 of 
Article L, so as to prohibit Congressional inter- 
ference with elections, as hitherto mentioned ; 
and the creation of a common judge in case of 
internal danger of revolution and separation, also 
hitherto mentioned. The original authors should 
have settled the internal improvement and tariff 
questions. Generalities take the place of special- 
ties. Epigrammatic enumerations give elastical 
interpretation. Thus the foregoing great ques- 
tions are relegated to brief clauses relating to the 
regulation of commerce and the laying of duties 
on imports. The President should have been 
allowed to veto any item or items of an appro- 
priation bill. New States without the requisite 
population have been admitted under the plati- 
tudinous words: ''New States may be admitted 
into this Union/' " Congress shall have power to 
establish post-ofifices and post-roads," are words 
so vague that Congress and Postmaster-Generals 
have but little regard for the sacred privacy of 
correspondence which is an element of free 
speech, nor of that liberty of the press which 
is the palladium of a sovereign people. 

There is no limitation to departmental creations 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 1 6/ 

under the '' general welfare " phrase, and hence 
we have a Secretary of Agriculture, and a Bureau 
of Education, which will perhaps in time evolve a 
Secretary of Education. Without constitutional 
warrant the agents of the States are made peda- 
gogic, piscatory, entomologic, and herbivorous ! 
Commissioners of bureaux are increasing all for 
the "• general welfare/' 

So much time was spent by the convention of 
1787 in the bitter contest beween the large and 
small States, that the fatigued members were 
eager to adjourn and go home. This, together 
with other conflicting opinions, accounts for the 
omissions and generalities. 

Many deputies had quietly left the convention, 
discontented with some of its legislation. The 
signers, headed .by General Washington, dined to- 
gether, and congratulated each other on the work 
accomplished in little less than five months. The 
time was too short to lay the foundations so broad 
and deep as to maintain a superstructure which 
should defy the centuries of change. The struct- 
ure is a mixture of Doric, Corinthian, Ionic, and 
Composite. It ought to have been Doric. 

Concluding Words. 

Such is the Constitution of the United States 
of America. It is not jure divmo — only the best 



1 68 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION 

that human ingenuity and compromise could de- 
vise. For more than a century it has Hved. 
Happily the war between the States made no 
structural changes. The principles of the best of 
the framers, supplemented by the Bill of Rights, 
still vitalize it. 

This parchment has been a model for Mexican, 
Central American, and South American States, 
some of whom are named for these United States, 
the last being Brazil, the Latins thereof giving us 
a new lesson on progressive statesmanship, for 
they overturned the throne of the immemorial 
Braganzas, abolished slavery, separated church 
and State, established freedom of conscience and 
of speech, and on the ruins of an empire erected 
a confederation of States by a peaceful and blood- 
less revolution. 

Free institutions are recreative. Apart from 
the parchment compact between the States of 
our Union, there is something in our varied soil 
and climate which transforms the alien settlers, 
and which beautifies and ennobles the faces and 
forms of their offspring. Thus by a process natu- 
ral and political, the free sovereign and indepen- 
dent citizen is both the result of soil and climate, 
and of the benign institutions founded by the 
men of the Revolution. 

The hand that pens these concluding words 



OF THE UNITED STATES, 1 69 

has written the axiomatic legend that patriotism 
is reverence for the old and the tried, not for the 
new and untried. The indisposition of the more 
thoughtful people of the States to give the United 
States more power by amending the Constitution 
is a guarantee, at least in our generation, that 
paternalism w^hich is empire shall not be tol- 
erated. 

The cohesion of force is temporary. Integra- 
tion is soon followed by disintegration. Fewer 
laws and more principles will weld together the 
States and the people in a common bond of con- 
sent. In that single word consent lies the vital 
perpetuity of our States-Union. 

Repudiate the amendments to the Constitution 
which ignorant, ambitious, or designing men in 
Congress draft every session in the interest of 
nationalism. Let the Supreme Court of the 
United States understand that there is no '^na- 
tional government '' on this continent, but con- 
federated sovereignties, and bid the judges cease 
their encroachment on the reserved rights of the 
States. Demand of Congress a rigid adherence 
to the Constitution in every act of legislation. 

The grand Christ precept, '' As ye sow so shall 
ye reap," is the universal law of moral and politi- 
cal being. Heaven help us to sow well for our- 
selves and for that posterity to whose hands will 



170 CATECHISM OF THE CONSTITUTION, 

be committed the custody of the lives of the sev- 
eral States and of the United States. 

Thus may be postponed for an indefinite age 
the terrible fate of the Roman Empire when the 
sceptre fell from the nerveless grasp of Theo- 
dosius the Great. The historian tells us that the 
empire was too large and heavy, and too laden 
with vices, to be upborne and swayed by one ruler, 
and, " breaking into two parts, rolled on either side 
of his coffin,'* forming the Latin and the Greek 
empires, which in turn disintegrated and disap- 
peared forever. 

APPENDIX. 

That the reader may consult the text free from 
all interpretation and historical remarks of the 
author, the entire Constitution of the United 
States is appended. The prime object of this 
catechism is not to deal with every article of the 
instrument seriatim^ but to outline such funda- 
mental constitutional principles as underlie the 
latest and best experiment in democratic-republi- 
can government. 



CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA. 

PREAMBLE. 

We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more 
perfect union, estabUsh justice, insure domestic tranquillity, pro- 
vide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do 
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of 
America. 

ARTICLE I. 

THE LEGISLATIVE DEPARTMENT. 

Section I. — All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested 
in a Congress Of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate 
and House of Representatives. 

Section II. — i. The House of Representatives shall be com- 
posed of members chosen every second year by the people of the 
several States ; and the electors in each State shall have the quali- 
fications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the 
State legislature. 

2. No person shall be a representative who shall not have at- 
tained to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citi- 
zen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an 
inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen. 

3. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several States which may be included within this Union, 
according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined 
by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those 
bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not 
taxed, three fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration 



172 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the 
Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term 
of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The 
number of representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty 
thousand, but each State shall have at least one representative ; 
and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New 
Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three ; Massachusetts, eight ; 
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, one ; Connecticut, five ; 
New York, six ; New Jersey, four ; Pennsylvania, eight ; Dela- 
ware, one ; Maryland, six ; Virginia, ten ; North Carolina, five ; 
South Carolina, five ; and Georgia, three. 

4. When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, 
the executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill 
such vacancies. 

5. The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and 
other officers, and shall have the sole power of impeachment. 

Section III. — i. The Senate of the United States shall be 
composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the legis- 
lature thereof for six years ; and each Senator shall have one vote. 

2. Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of 
the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into 
three classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be 
vacated at the expiration of the second year, of the second class at 
the expiration of the fourth year, and of the third class at the 
expiration of the sixth year, so that one third may be chosen every 
second year.; and if vacancies happen, by resignation or otherwise, 
during the recess of the legislature of any State, the executive 
thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting 
of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies. 

3. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to 
the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United 
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that 
State for which he shall be chosen. 

4. The Vice-President of the United States shall be President 
of the Senate, but shall have no vote unless they be equally 
divided. 

5. The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a Presi- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1/3 

dent pro tempore in the absence of the Vice-President, or when he 
shall exercise the office of President of the United States. 

6. The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. 
When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. 
When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice 
shall preside : and no person shall be convicted without the con- 
currence of two thirds of the members present. 

7. Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further 
than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy 
any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States ; but 
the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to 
indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment, according to law. 

Section IV. — i. The times, places, and manner of holding 
elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in 
each State by the legislature thereof ; but the Congress may at any 
time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the 
places of choosing Senators. 

2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year ; 
and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, 
unless they shall by law appoint a different day. 

Section V. — i. Each house shall be the judge of the elections, 
returns, and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of 
each shall constitute a quorum to do business ; but a smaller num- 
ber may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to com- 
pel the attendance of absent members, in such manner and under 
such penalties as each house may provide. 

2. Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, 
punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with the concur- 
rence of two-thirds, expel a member. 

3. Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from 
time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in 
their judgment require secrecy ; and the yeas and nays of the 
members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of 
one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal. 

4. Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without 
the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to 
any other place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting. 



174 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

Section VI. — i. The Senators and Representatives shall 
receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law, 
and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall, in 
all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be 
privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of 
their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the 
same ; and for any speech or debate in either house they shall not 
be questioned in any other place. 

2. No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for 
which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the 
authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or 
the emoluments whereof shall have been increased, during such 
time ; and no person holding any office under the United States 
shall be a member of either house during his continuance in office. 

Section VII. — i. All bills for raising revenue shall originate 
in the House of Representatives ; but the Senate may propose or 
concur with amendments, as on other bills. 

2. Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representa- 
tives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented 
to the President of the United States ; if he approve, he shall sign 
it ; but if not, he shall return it, with his objections, to that house 
in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at 
large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If, after 
such reconsideration, two thirds of that house shall agree to pass 
the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other 
house, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered ; and if approved 
by two thirds of that house, it shall become a law. But in all such 
cases the votes of both houses shall be determined by yeas and 
nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill 
shall be entered on the journal of each house respectively. If any 
bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays 
excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall 
be a law in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress 
by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not 
be a law. 

3. Every order, resolution, or vote, to which the concurrence of 
the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1 75 

on a question of adjournment), shall be presented to the President 
of the United States ; and before the same shall take effect, shall 
be approved by him ; or being disapproved by him, shall be re- 
passed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, 
according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a 
bill. 

Section VIII. — -The Congress shall have power — 

1. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises ; to pay 
the debts, and provide for the common defence and general wel- 
fare of the United States ; but all duties, imposts, and excises 
shall be uniform throughout the United States : 

2. To borrow money on the credit of the United States : 

3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the 
several States, and with the Indian tribes : 

4. To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform 
laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States : 

5. To coin money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign 
coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures : 

6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securi- 
ties and current coin of the United States : 

7. To establish post-offices and post-roads : 

8. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by 
securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive 
right to their respective writings and discoveries : 

9. To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court : 

10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the 
high seas, and offences against the law of nations : 

11. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and 
make rules concerning captures on land and water : 

12. To raise and support armies ; but no appropriation of 
money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years : 

13. To provide and maintain a navy : 

14. To make rules for the government and regulation of the 
land and naval forces : 

15. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws 
of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions : 

16. To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the 



176 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed 
in the service of the United States ; reserving to the States 
respectively the appointment of the officers and the authority of 
training the miHtia according to the disciphne prescribed by 
Congress : 

17. To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over 
such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession 
of particular States, and the acceptance of the Congress, become 
the seat of government of the United States ; and to exercise like 
authority over all places purchased, by the consent of the legisla- 
ture of the State in which the same shall be, for the erection of 
forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings : 
— and 

18. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers 
vested by this Constitution in the government of the United 
States, or in any department or officer thereof. 

Section IX. — i. The migration or importation of such per- 
sons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, 
shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one 
thousand eight hundred and eight ; but a tax or duty may be 
imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each 
person. 

2. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus- 
pended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public 
safety may require it. 

3. No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. 

4. No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in pro- 
portion to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be 
taken. 

5. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any 
State. No preference shall be given by any regulation of com- 
merce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another ; 
nor shall vessels bound to or from one State be obliged to enter, 
clear, or pay duties in another. 

6. No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in conse- 
quence of appropriations made by law ; and a regular statement 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1 7/ 

and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money 
shall be published from time to time. 

7. No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States ; 
and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, 
shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, 
emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, 
prince, or foreign state. 

Section X. — i. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, 
or confederation ; grant letters of marque and reprisal ; coin 
money ; emit bills of credit ; make anything but gold and silver 
coin a tender in payment of debts ; pass any bill of attainder, ex 
post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts ; or 
grant any title of nobility. 

2. No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any 
imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be abso- 
lutely necessary for executing its inspection laws ; and the net 
produce of all duties and imposts laid by any State on imports or 
exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States, 
and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of 
the Congress. 

3. No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any 
duty on tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter 
into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a for- 
eign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such 
imminent danger as will not admit of delay. 

ARTICLE II. 

THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT. 

Section I. — i. The executive power shall be vested in a Presi- 
dent of the United States of America. He shall hold his office 
during the term of four years ; and, together with the Vice-Presi- 
dent, chosen for the same term, be elected as follows : 

2. Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature 
thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole num- 
ber of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be 
entitled in the Congress ; but no Senator or Representative, or 
12 



178 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, 
shall be appointed an elector. 

[3. The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by 
ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhab- 
itant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a 
list of all the persons voted for and of the number of votes for 
each ; which Hst they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to 
the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the 
President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in 
the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all 
the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person 
having the greatest number of votes shall be President, if such 
number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed ; 
and if there be more than one who have such a majority, and have 
an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall 
immediately choose, by ballot, one of them for President ; and if 
no person have a majority, then, from the five highest on the list, 
the said House shall, in like manner choose a President. But in 
choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the rep- 
resentation from each State having one vote ; a quorum for this 
purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of 
the States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a 
choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the per- 
son having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be 
Vice-President. But if there should remain two or more who have 
equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them, by ballot, the Vice- 
President.] ^ 

4. The Congress may determine the time of choosing the elect- 
ors, and the day on which they shall give their votes, which day 
shall be the same throughout the United States. 

5. No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the 
United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, 
shall be eUgible to the office of President ; neither shall any per- 
son be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the 
age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within 
the United States. 

* The clause in brackets was annulled by Article XII. under Amendments. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1 79 

6. In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his 
death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties 
of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President ; 
and the Congress may, by law, provide for the case of removal, 
death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice- 
President, declaring what officer shall then act as President ; and 
such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, 
or a President shall be elected. 

7. The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services 
a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished' 
during the period for w^hich he shall have been elected ; and he 
shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the 
United States, or any of them. 

8. Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take 
the following oath or affirmation : 

" I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute 
the office of President of the United States ; and will, to the best 
of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the 
United States." 

Section II. — i. The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of 
the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the 
several States, when called into the actual service of the United 
States. Pie may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal 
officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject re- 
lating to the duties of their respective offices ; and he shall have 
power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the 
United States, except in cases of impeachment. 

2. He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators 
present concur ; and he shall nominate, and, by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, 
other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, 
and all other officers of the United States whose appointm^ents are 
not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established 
by law. But the Congress may, by law, vest the appointment of 
such inferior officers as they think proper, in the President alone, 
in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments. 



l80 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

3. The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that 
may happen during- the recess of the Senate, by granting com- 
missions, which shall expire at the end of their next session. 

Section III. — He shall, from time to time, give to the Congress 
information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their 
consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and 
expedient. He may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both 
houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between 
them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn 
them to such time as he shall think proper. He shall receive am- 
bassadors and other public ministers. He shall take care that the 
laws be faithfully executed ; and shall commission all the officers 
of the United States. 

Section IV. — The President, Vice-President, and all civil offi- 
cers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeach- 
ment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes 
and mxisdemeanors. 

ARTICLE III. 

THE JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT. 

Section I. — The judicial power of the United States shall be 
vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the 
Congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish. The 
judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their 
offices during good behavior ; and shall, at stated times, receive for 
their services a compensation, which shall not be diminished 
during their continuance in office. 

Section II. — i. The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law 
and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United 
States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their 
authority ; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public minis- 
ters, and consuls ; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdic- 
tion ; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party ; 
to controversies between tw^o or more States ; between a State and 
citizens of another State ; between citizens of different States ; 
between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. l8l 

different States ; and between a State, or the citizens thereof, and 
foreign states, citizens, or subjects. * 

2. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, 
and consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Su- 
preme Court shall have originial jurisdiction. In all the other 
cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate 
jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and 
under such regulations as the Congress shall make. 

3. The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall 
be by jury, and such trial shall be held in the State where the said 
crimes shall have been committed ; but when not committed within 
any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as Congress 
may by law have directed, f 

Section III. — i. Treason against the United States shall con- 
sist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their 
enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be con- 
victed of treason, unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the 
same overt act, or on confession in open court. 

2. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of 
treason ; but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of 
blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted. 

ARTICLE IV. 

MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS. 

Section I. — Full faith and credit shall be given in each State 
to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other 
State ; and the Congress may, by general laws, prescribe the 
manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be 
proved, and the effect thereof. 

Section II. — i. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to 
all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. 

2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other 
crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, 
shall, on demand of the executive authority of the State from 

* See Article XI., Amendments. t See Article VI., Amendments. 



1 82 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having 
jurisdiction of the crime. 

3. No person held to service or labor in one State, under the 
laws thereof, escaping- into another, shall, in consequence of any 
law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor ; 
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such ser- 
vice or labor may be due. 

Section III. — i. New States may be admitted by the Congress 
into this Union ; but no new State shall be formed or erected 
within the jurisdiction of any other State, nor any State be formed 
by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without 
the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned, as well as 
of the Congress. 

2. The Congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all 
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other 
property belonging to the United States ; and nothing in this 
Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of 
the United States, or of any particular State. 

Section IV. — The United States shall guarantee to every State 
in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect 
each of them against invasion ; and, on application of the legisla- 
ture, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be con- 
vened), against domestic violence. 

ARTICLE V. 

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem 
it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution ; or, 
on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several 
States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, 
in either case, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part 
of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three 
fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths 
thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be pro- 
posed by the Congress ; provided that no amendment which may 
be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight 
shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1 83 

ninth section of the first article ; and that no State, without its 
consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. 

ARTICLE VI. 

1. Ail debts contracted, and engagements entered into, before 
the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the 
United States under this Constitution as under the Confederation. 

2. This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which 
shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or 
which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, 
shall be the supreme law of the land ; and the judges in every 
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws 
of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. 

3. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the 
members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and 
judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several 
States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Consti- 
tution ; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification 
to any office or public trust under the United States. 

ARTICLE VII. 

The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be suffi- 
cient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States 
so ratifying the same. 

Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States 
present, the seventeenth day of September, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, and of 
the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth. 
In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names. 

George Washington, 
President^ and Deputy frojn Virginia. 

New Hampshi^'e. 
JohnLangdon, 
Nicholas Oilman. 

Massachusetts. 



Nathaniel Gorham, 
RuFUS King. 



Connecticut. 

William Samuel Johnson, 
Roger Sherman. 



New York. 
Alexander Hamilton. 



1 84 



CONSTITUTION OF THE 



New Jersey. 

William Livingston, 
David Brearly, 
William Paterson, 
Jonathan Dayton. 

Pennsylvaiiia. 

Benjamin Franklin, 
Thomas Mifflin, 
Robert Morris, 
George Clymer, 
Thomas Fitzsimons, 
Jared Ingersoll, 
James Wilson, 
Gouverneur Morris. 

Delaware. 
George Read, 
Gunning Bedford, Jr., 
John Dickinson, 
Richard Bassett, 
Jacob Broom. 

Attest : 



Maryland. 

James McHenry, 

Daniel of St. Th. Jenifer, 

Daniel Carroll. 

Virgmia. 

John Blair, 
James Madison, Jr. 

North Carolijia, 

William Blount, 
Richard Dobbs Spaight, 
Hugh Williamson. 

South Caroliiia. 
John Rutledge, 
Charles C. Pinckney, 
Charles Pinckney, 
Pierce Butler. 

Georgia. 

William Few, 
Abraham Baldwin. 

William Jackson, 

Secretary. 



AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 

Article I. — Congress shall make no law respecting an estab- 
lishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ; or 
abridging the freedom of speech or of the press ; or the right of 
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government 
for a redress of grievances. 

Article II. — A well-regulated militia being necessary to the 
security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear 
arms shall not be infringed. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1 85 

xA.RTiCLE III. — No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered 
in any house without the consent of the owner ; nor in time of war, 
but in a manner to be prescribed by law. 

Article IV. — The right of the people to be secure in their 
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
and seizures, shall not be violated ; and no warrants shall issue but 
upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and par- 
ticularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or 
things to be seized. 

Article V. — No person shall be held to answer for a capital or 
otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment 
of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, 
or in the miHtia, when in actual service in time of war or public 
danger ; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be 
twice put in jeopardy of life or limb ; nor shall be compelled in 
any criminal case to be witness against himself ; nor be deprived 
of Hfe, liberty, or property, without due process of law ; nor 
shall private property be taken for public use without just com- 
pensation. 

Article VI. — In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall 
enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury 
of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been com- 
mitted, which district shall have been previously ascertained by 
law ; and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusa- 
tion ; to be confronted with the witnesses against him ; to have 
compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor ; and to 
have the assistance of counsel for his defence. 

Article VII. — In suits at common law, where the value in con- 
troversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall 
be preserved ; and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re- 
examined in any court of the United States, than according to 
the rules of the common law. 

Article VIII. — Excessive bail shall not be required, nor ex- 
cessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. 

Article IX. — The enumeration in the Constitution of certain 
rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained 
by the people. 



1 86 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

Article X. — The powers not delegated to the United States 
by this Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved 
to the States respectively, or to the people. 

Article XI. — The judicial power of the United States shall 
not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, com- 
menced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens 
of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. 

Article XII. — i. The electors shall meet in their respective 
States, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one 
of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State 
with themselves. They shall name in their ballots the person 
voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for 
as Vice-President ; and they shall make distinct lists of all persons 
voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-Presi- 
dent, and of the number of votes for each ; which lists they shall 
sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government 
of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. 
The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate 
and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the 
votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest 
number of votes for President shall be the President, if such num- 
ber be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed ; and 
if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the 
highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list of those voted 
for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose imme- 
diately, by ballot, the President. But, in choosing the President, 
the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each 
State having one vote : a quorum for this purpose shall consist of 
a member or members from two thirds of the States, and a major- 
ity of all the States shall be necessary to a choice. And if the 
House of Representatives shall not choose a President, whenever 
the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day 
of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as 
President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disa- 
bility of the President. 

2. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice- 
President shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a major- 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1 8/ 

ity of the whole number of electors appointed ; and if no person 
have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list 
the Senate shall choose the Vice-President. A quorum for the 
purpose shall consist of two thirds of the whole number of Sena- 
tors, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a 
choice. 

3. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of 
President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United 
States. 

Article XIII. — Section I. — Neither slavery nor involuntary 
servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party 
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United 
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 

Section II. — Congress shall have power to enforce this article 
by appropriate legislation. 

Article XIV. — Section I. — All persons born or naturalized 
in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are 
citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. 
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States ; nor shall 
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without 
due process of law ; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction 
the equal protection of the laws. 

Section II. — Representatives shall be apportioned among the 
several States according to their respective numbers, counting the 
whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not 
taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice 
of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, 
Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of 
a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any 
of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of 
age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, 
except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of 
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which 
the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number 
of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. 

Section III. — No person shall be a Senator or Representative 



1 88 CONSTITUTION OF THE 

in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold 
any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any 
State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Con- 
gress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any 
State legislature, or as any executive or judicial officer of any 
State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have 
engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid 
or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote 
of two thirds of each house, remove such disability. 

Section IV. — The vahdity of the public debt of the United 
States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment 
of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection 
or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United 
States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation 
incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United 
States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave ; but 
all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and 
void. 

Section V. — The Congress shall have power to enforce, by 
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. 

Article XV. — Section I. — The right of citizens of the United 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States 
or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude. 

Section II. — The Congress shall have power to enforce this 
article by appropriate legislation. 



The original Constitution is in the Library of 
the State Department at Washington, together 
with the resohation of the Convention submitting 
it to the several States for ratification. The room 
is fireproof, and the safe is a specially built fire- 
proof receptacle. 

These invaluable documents were on exhibition 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1 89 

at the World's Fair at Chicago, and were guarded 
on their way thither and on their return by State 
Department officials and a strong guard of soldiers 
of the United States Army. The Constitution, 
which was written on five sheets, and the resolu- 
tion, on one sheet, have been injured by handling, 
and the State Department will likely never again 
allow them to be taken from the safe where they 
are deposited. 

The resolution transmitting the Constitution to 
the States for ratification commences: ** In CON- 
VENTION, Monday, September 17, 1787. PRES- 
ENT, the States of New Hampshire, Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, Mr. Hamilton from New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, 
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and 
Georgia." 

The foregoing is another and final declaration 
that States, not men, were the framers of the 
Constitution. New York was not present, as 
heretofore shown. Hamilton was allowed to act 
for New York, for politic reasons. He had no 
vote. 

The Constitution as published by the author 
is correct, the errors that have crept into it by 
numerous reprints having been carefully elimi- 
nated. 

As a lawyer the author has interpreted essen- 



190 CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 

tial portions of the instrument, and as a journalist 
set forth these interpretations faithfully and fear- 
lessly for many years in the North and the South 
It is believed that the fundamental principles thus 
announced are epitomized truths, and will, as in 
the past, fructify in the future. 



